LIB  R  _A.  R  Y 

OF    TIIF. 

Theological     Seminary, 

PRINCETON,    N^    J. 

Oue  "E;SZ 55  5  Division 

.Shelf    .4-,   I    ^c  !7        Section 

^""'■'  No, .... 


\ 


y 


Wkm  wm  onx  €o$pb  Wxlitm'} 


AN  ARGUMENT 

BY 

CONSTANTINE  TISCHENDORF. 

"ftTETH 

A  NARRATIVE  OF  THE  DISCOVERY 


OF 


THE  SINAITIO  MANUSCEIPT. 


TRANSLATED   AND   PUBLISHED   BY   THE   EELIGIOUS    TEACT 

SOCIETY  IN  LONDON,   UNDER  AN  ARRANGEMENT 

"WITH  THE  AUTHOR. 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE 
AMERICAN   TRACT   SOCIETY, 

150  NASSAU-STEEET,  NEW  YORK. 


CONTENTS. 


■  >  < 


Preface- page      5 

Introductory — Narrative  of  the  Discovery  of  the  Sina- 
itic  Manuscript -'-- 13 

CHAPTER  I. 
Ecclesiastical  Testimony - 43 

CHAPTER  II. 

Tije  Testimony  of  Heretics  and  Heathen  during  the 

Second  Century - -     75 

CHAPTER  III. 
Apocryphal  Literature - 86 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Testimony  of  Apostolic  Fathers.     Barnabas — Papias-     96 

CHAPTER  V. 
Manuscripts  and  Versions  of  the  Second  Century 125 


TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE. 


The  name  of  Dr.  Constantine  Tischendorf  is 
too  well  known  to  need  any  introduction  to  the 
English  readei?.  As  a  critic  and  decipherer  of 
ancient  manuscripts  he  is  without  a  rival,  and  to 
his  other  services  in  this  important  department 
of  sacred  literature  he  has  added  one  which 
alone  would  reward  the  labor  of  a  lifetime,  in 
the  discovery  of  the  Sinaitic  Manuscript,  the  fuU 
particulars  of  which  are  now  given  to  the  Eng- 
lish reader  for  the  first  time  in  the  following 
pages. 

The  original  pamphlet  of  Dr.  Tischendorf, 
Wann  wurden  unsere  Evangelien  veifasst?  attract- 
ed great  attention  on  its  publication,  now  up- 
wards of  two  years  ago  ;  but  as  it  was  written  in 
the  technical  style  in  which  German  professors 
are  accustomed  to  address  their  students  and  the 
learned  classes  generally,  it  was  felt  that  a  revis- 


6  TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE. 

ion  of  this  pamphlet,  in  a  more  popular  form 
and  adapted  to  general  readers,  would  meet  a 
want  of  the  age.  Dr.  Tischendorf  accordingly 
comiDlied  with  this  request,  and  prepared  a 
popular  version,  in  which  the  same  arguments 
for  the  genuineness  and  authenticity  of  our  Gos- 
pels were  reproduced,  but  in  a  style  more  at- 
tractive to  general  readers,  and  with  explana- 
tions which  clear  up  what  would  otherwise  be 
unintelligible.  Of  this  revised  and  popular  ver- 
sion of  his  proof  of  the  genuineness  of  our  Gos- 
pels the  following  is  an  accurate  translation. 

It  may  interest  the  reader  to.know  that  the 
pamphlet  in  its  popular  form  has  already  passed 
through  three  large  impressions  in  Germany  :  it 
also  has  been  twice  translated  into  French  ;  one 
version  of  which  is  by  Professor  Sardinoux,  for 
the  Religious  Book  Society  of  Toulouse.  It  has 
also  been  translated  into  Dutch  and  Russian; 
and  an  Itahan  version  is  in  preparation  at  Rome, 
the  execution  of  which  has  been  undertaken  by 
an  archbishop  of  the  church  of  Rome,  and  with 
the  approbation  of  the  pope. 

We  have  only  to  add  that  this  version  into 
English  has  been  undertaken  with  the  express 
approbation  of  the  author,  and  is  sent  forth  in 
the  hope  that,  with  the  Divine  blessing,  it  may 
be  instrumental  in  confirming  the  faith  of  many 


TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE.  1 

oJ'  our  Engiisli  readers  in  the  "  certainty  of  those 
things  in  which  they  have  been  instructed."  If 
the  foundations  be  overthrown,  what  shall  the 
righteous  do?  On  the  credibility  of  the  four 
Gospels,  the  whole  of  Christianity  rests  as  a 
building  on  its  foundations.  Hence  it  is  that  the 
Infidel  and  the  Deist,  with  their  unnatural  ally 
the  rationalizing  Christian  professor,  have  direct- 
ed their  attacks  to  the  task  of  sapping  these  foun- 
dations. How  unsuccessful  as  yet  these  repeated 
attempts  of  negative  criticism  have  been,  may  be 
seen  fi'om  the  fact  that  the  assault  is  repeated 
again  and  again.  Infidelity,  we  are  sure,  would 
not  waste  her  strength  in  thrice  slaying  the  slain, 
or  in  raking  av^^ay  the  ruins  of  a  structure  which 
has  been  demolished  already.  If  the  objections 
of  Paulus  and  Eichhorn  had  been  successful,  the 
world  would  never  have  heard  of  Baur  and  the 
school  of  Tiibingen.  And  again,  if  the  Tiibingen 
school  had  prevailed,  there  would  not  have  been 
any  room  for  the  labors  of  such  destructive  crit- 
ics as  Yolckmar  of  Zurich  and  others.  The  la- 
test attack  is,  we  are  told,  to  be  the  last,  until  it 
fails,  and  another  is  prepared  more  threatening 
than  the  former.  Thus  every  wave  which  beats 
against  the  rock  of  eternal  truth  seems  to  rise 
out  of  the  trough  caused  by  some  receding  wave, 
and  raises  its  threatening  crest  as  if  it  would 


8  TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE. 

wnsli  away  tlie  rock.  These  waves  of  the  sea  are 
mighty,  and  rage  terribly,  but  the  Lord  who  sit- 
teth  on  high  is  mightier.  It  is  of  the  nature  of 
truth,  that  the  more  it  is  tested  the  more  sure  it 
becomes  under  the  trial.  So  it  has  been  with  the 
argument  for  the  genuineness  of  the  Gospels. 
The  more  that  infidels  have  sought  to  shake  the 
character  of  St.  John's  Gosx^el,  the  more  collat- 
eral proofs  have  started  up  of  the  apostolic  char- 
acter of  this  Gospel.  Thus,  though  they  mean 
it  not  so,  these  attacks  of  opponents  are  among 
the  means  whereby  fresh  evidences  of  the  certi- 
tude of  the  Gospels  are  call(5d  out.  No  one  has 
contributed  more  to  this  department  of  Christian 
literatui-e  than  Dr.  Tischendorf.  This  is  an  age 
when  little  books  on  great  subjects  are  in  greater 
request  than  ever.  No  defence  of  truth  can  there- 
fore be  more  serviceable  than  the  following  short 
pami)hlet,  in  which,  in  a  few  pages,  and  in  a  clear 
and  attractive  style,  the  genuineness  of  the  Gos- 
pels is  traced  up  inductively  step  by  step,  almost, 
if  not  quite,  to  the  days  of  the  apostles. 

The  method  of  proof  is  one  which  is  thoroughly 
satisfactory,  and  carries  the  convictions  of  the 
reader  along  with  it  at  every  step.  Circumstan- 
tial evidence  when  complete,  and  when  every  link 
in  the  chain  has  been  thoroughly  tested,  is  as 
strong  as  direct  testimony.     This  is  the  kind  of 


TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE.  9 

evidence  wliicli  Dr.  Tiscliendorf  brings  for  the 
genuineness  of  our  Gospels. 

By  what  logicians  call  the  method  of  rejection, 
it  is  shown  successively,  that  the  Gospels  which 
were  admitted  as  canonical  in  the  fourth  century 
could  not  have  been  written  so  late  as  the  third 
century  after  Christ.  Then,  in  the  same  way, 
the  testimony  of  the  third  century  carries  us  up 
to  the  second.  The  writers,  again,  of  the  second 
century  not  only  refer  to  the  Gospels  as  already 
commonly  received  as  parts  of  sacred  Scripture, 
but  also  refer  their  origin  to  a  date  not  later  than 
the  end  of  the  first  century. 

The  induction  is  thus  complete,  that  these 
writings  which  the  earliest  of  the  apostolic  fa- 
thers refer  to,  and  quote  as  apostolic  writings, 
must  have  had  their  origin  in  apostolic  times. 
Thus  we  see,  that  of  all  theories,  the  most  irra- 
tional is  that  of  the  Rationalists,  who  would  have 
us  believe  that  the  Gos^^el  of  St.  John  was  not 
written  before  the  middle  of  the  second  centur}^, 
and  by  a  writer  who  palmed  himself  off  as  the 
Apostle  John.  We  are  at  a  loss  to  understand 
how  the  Church  of  the  second  century  could  have 
been  so  simple  as  not  to  detect  the  forgery,  as  it 
did  in  the  case  of  the  so-called  Apocryphal  Gos- 
pels. The  Rationalists  give  us  no  explanation 
of  this,  but  would  have  us  believe,  on  grounds  of 


10  TRANSLATOR'S   TREFACE. 

pure  subjective  criticism,  that  the  deity  of  our 
Lord  was  a  development  of  the  second  and  third 
centuries,  after  that  the  earher  Ebionite  view  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  had  been  mixed  up  with  the 
Alexandrian  doctrine  of  the  Logos  :  and  that,  as 
an  amalgam  of  these  two  elements,  the  one  Jew- 
ish and  the  other  Greek,  there  resulted  the  Atha- 
nasian  formula  of  the  fourth  century. 

The  historical  j^roofs  of  Dr.  Tischendorf  blow 
to  pieces  this  unsubstantial  structure  of  inner  or 
subjective  criticism.  No  English  reader  of  com- 
mon sense  will  hesitate  for  an  instant  to  decide 
to  which  side  the  scale  inclines.  With  that  rev- 
erence for  facts  which  is  our  English  birthright, 
we  should  set  one  single  documentary  proof  like 
that,  for  instance,  of  the  Codex  Muratori,  referred 
to  in  the  following  pages,  against  all  the  subjec- 
tive criticism  of  the  Tiibingen  school.  Too  long 
has  Germany  dreamed  away  her  faith  in  the  his- 
torical Christ,  under  the  sleeping  potions  of  these 
critics  of  the  ideahst  school,  who,  with  Baur  at 
their  head,  only  ap2:)ly  to  theology  the  desolating 
and  destructive  theory  of  Hegel,  that  thought, 
when  it  projects  itself  outward,  produces  things  ; 
and  that  all  things  exist,  because  they  seem  to 
exist. 

With  such  a  school  of  metaphysics  to  start 
from,  it  is  easy  to  see  what  the  results  would  be 


TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE.  U 

wlien  applied  to  liistorical  criticism.  "As  with 
an  enchanter's  wand,"  facts  which  inconveniently 
did  not  square  with  the  professor's  theory  were 
waved  away  into  thin  air,  and  history  became  a 
kind  of  phantasmagoria,  a  series  of  dissolving 
views.  But  the  "magic  lantern  school,"  as  they 
have  been  happily  called,  has  been  already  dis- 
credited in  Germany,  and  is  not  likely  to  gain 
much  ground  in  this  country.  To  complete  their 
discomfiture,  the  labors  of  such  textuary  critics 
as  Dr.  Tischendorf  are  invaluable  :  critical  proofs 
such  as  his  are  all  the  more  acceptable  as  com- 
ing from  Germany.  The  goodness  and  wisdom 
of  God  are  seen  in  this,  that  as  negative  criticism 
had  struck  its  roots  deepest  in  German  soil,  so 
fi'om  Germany  it  is  now  receiving  its  deadliest 
blow.  In  nature,  we  know  the  antidote  to  cer- 
tain poisons  is  found  grawing  close  beside  the 
bane.  In  Corsica,  for  instance,  the  mineral 
springs  of  Orezza  are  considered  a  specific  for 
the  malaria  fever  produced  in  the  plains  below  ; 
so  healthy  German  criticism  has  done  more  than 
any  thing  else  to  clear  the  air  of  the  miasma 
caused  by  unhealthy  speculation. 

The  results  of  a  single  discovery  such  as  that 
of  Tischendorf  will  neutralize  to  every  unpreju- 
diced mind  all  the  doubts  which  subjective  criti- 
cism has  been  able  to  raise  as  to  the  genuineness 


12  TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE. 

of  St.  Jolin's  Gospel.  Thus  it  is  that  God's  word 
is  tried  to  the  uttermost,  and  because  so  tried 
and  found  true,  his  servants  love  it.  If  the 
doubting:  of  Thomas  was  overruled  to  the  confir- 
mation  of  the  faith  of  all  the  Apostles,  we  see  the 
reason  why  the  subjective  criticism  of  the  Tubin- 
gen school  has  been  allowed  to  sap,  if  it  could, 
the  evidence  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  in  order 
that  additional  testimony  should  be  brought  fi'om 
a  convent  on  Mount  Sinai  to  confirm  us  still 
more  fully  in  "the  certainty  of  those  things  in 
which  we  have  been  instructed." 

THE  TRANSLATOR 
OOTOBEB,  18G6. 


THE  DISCOVERY 
or 

THE  SINAITIC  MANUSCRIPT. 


As  the  conference  of  the  Evangelical  church 
of  Germany,  held  at  Altenburg,  in  the  month 
of  September,  1864,  turned  its  attention  to 
certain  recent  works  on  the  life  of  Jesus,  I 
was  requested  by  my  fiiends  to  put  together 
a  few  thoughts  on  this  important  subject, 
and  read  them  before  the  congress.  This  I 
consented  to  do,  and  ]poiiited  out  that  M. 
Benan  has  taken  strange  liberties  with  the 
Holy  Land ;  and  that  the  history  of  the  early 
church  as  well  as  that  of  the  sacred  text,  con- 
tains abundant  arguments  in  reply  to  those 
who  deny  the  credibility  of  the  gospel  wit- 
nesses. My  address  was  so  favorably  received 
by  the  congress,  that  the  editor  of  the  Allge- 
meine  Kirchenzeitung,  on  the  3d  of  June  last, 


14         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVEllT 

made  use  of  tlie  following  language  :  "  I  ven- 
ture to  say  that  no  address  has  ever  stirred 
our  hearts  like  that  short  one  of  M.  Tischen- 
dorf.  As  a  critic  he  is  here  on  ground  on 
which  he  has  no  rival.  When  history  speaks, 
it  is  the  duty  of  philosophy  to  be  silent." 

Familiar  as  I  am  through  my  long  studies 
with  those  facts  which  are  best  calculated  to 
throw  light  on  that  great  question  which  now 
agitates  Christendom,  I  thought  it  right  to 
publish  the  sketch  of  the  subject,  hasty  as 
it  was,  which  I  had  prepared  at  Altenburg. 
My  work,  printed  in  the  month  of  March  of 
this  year,  has  been  so  favorably  received, 
that  in  three  weeks  an  edition  of  two  thousand 
copies  has  been  exhausted  :  a  second  edition 
was  brought  out  in  May,  and  translations 
into  French  and  English  were  also  prepared. 

At  the  same  time,  the  committee  of  the 
Religious  Tract  Society  of  Zwickau  expressed 
a  desire  to  circulate  this  pamphlet,  provided 
it  were  recast  and  adapted  for  popular  use. 
Although  I  had  many  other  occupations,  I 
could  not  but  comply  with  their  request,  and 
without  delay  applied  myself  to  the  task  of 
revising  the  pam])hlct.     I  was  glad  of  the 


OF   THE   SINAITIC   MANUSCEIPT.  15 

opportunity  of  addressing  in  tins  way  a  class 
of  readers  whom  my  former  writings  had  not 
reached;  for,  as  the  real  results  of  my  re- 
searches are  destined  to  benefit  the  church 
at  large,  it  is  right  that  the  whole  community 
should  participate  in  those  benefits. 

This  popular  tract,  in  the  shape  in  which 
I  now  publish  it,  lacks,  I  admit,  the  simple 
and  familiar  style  of  the  usual  publications 
of  the  Zwickau  Society;  but,  in  spite  of  this 
fault,  which  the  very  nature  of  the  subject 
renders  inevitable,  I  venture  to  hope  that  it 
will  be  generally  understood.  Its  chief  aim 
is  to  show  that  our  inspired  gospels  most  cer^ 
tainly  take  their  rise  from  apostolic  times,  and 
so  to  enable  the  reader  to  take  a  short  but 
clear  view  of  one  of  the  most  instructive  and 
important  epochs  of  the  Christian  church. 

In  sitting  down  to  write  a  popular  version 
of  my  pamphlet,  the  Zwickau  Society  also 
expressed  a  wish  that  I  should  preface  it 
with  a  short  account  of  my  researches,  and 
especially  of  the  discovery  of  the  Sinaitic  Co- 
dex, which  naturally  takes  an  important  place 
in  my  list  of  documentary  proofs.  The  ac- 
count of  these  discoveries  is  already  before 


IG         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

the  public,  but  as  it  is  possibly  new  to  many 
of  those  who  read  the  Zwickau  publications, 
I  yielded  to  the  wish  of  the  committee,  hav- 
ing no  other  desire  in  this  attempt  than  to 
build  up  my  readers  in  their  most  holy  faith. 
As  several  Uterary  and  historical  essays, 
written  by  me  when  a  very  young  man,  and 
in  particular  two  theological  prize  essays, 
were  favorably  received  by  the  pubhc,  I 
resolved,  in  1839,  to  devote  myself  to  the 
textual  study  of  the  New  Testament,  and  at- 
tempted, by  making  use  of  all  the  acquisitions 
of  the  last  three  centuries,  to  reconstruct,  if 
possible,  the  exact  text  as  it  came  from  the 
pen  of  the  sacred  writers.  My  first  critical 
edition  of  the  New  Testament  appeared  in 
the  autumn  of  1840.  But  after  giving  this 
edition  a  final  revision,  I  came  to  the  convic- 
tion that  to  make  use  even  of  our  existing 
materials  would  call  for  a  more  attentive 
study  than  they  had  hitherto  received,  and  I 
resolved  to  give  my  leisure  and  abilities  to  a 
fresh  examination  of  the  original  documents. 
For  the  accomplishment  of  this  protracted 
and  difficult  enterprise,  it  was  needful  not 
only  to  undertake  distant  journeys,  to  devote 


OF    THE   SINAITIC   MANUSCRIPT.  17 

much  time,  and  to  bring  to  the  task  both 
abihty  and  zeal,  but  also  to  provide  a  large 
sum  of  money,  and  this — the  sinews  of  war — 
was  altogether  wanting.  The  Theological 
Faculty  of  Leipzig  gave  me  a  letter  of  rec- 
ommendation to  the  Saxon  government;  but 
at  first  without  any  result.  M.  de  Falkenstein, 
however,  on  being  made  minister  of  public 
worship,  obtained  a  grant  for  me  of  one  hun- 
dred dollars  to  defray  my  travelling  expenses, 
and  the  promise  of  another  hundred  for  the 
following  year.  What  was  such  a  sum  as 
this  with  which  to  undertake  a  long  journey? 
Full  of  faith,  however,  in  the  proverb  that 
"  God  helps  those  vrho  hfelp  themselves,"  and 
that  what  is  right  must  prosper,  I  resolved, 
in  1840,  to  set  out  for  Paris  (on  the  very  day 
of  the  Feast  of  the  Reformation),  though  I 
had  not  sufficient  means  to  pay  even  for  my 
travelling  suit;  and  when  I  reached  Paris  I 
had  only  fifty  dollars  left.  The  other  fifty 
had  been  spent  on  my  journey. 

However,  I  soon  found  men  in  Paris  who 
were  interested  in  my  undertaking.  1  man- 
aged for  some  time  to  support  myself  by  my 
pen,  keeping,  however,  the  object  which  had 

Gospels  WiU  ten.  2 


18         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

brouglit  me  to  Paris  steadily  in  view.  After 
Laving  explored  for  two  years  the  rich  libra- 
ries of  this  great  city,  not  to  speak  of  several 
journeys  made  into  Holland  and  England,  I 
set  out  in  1843  for  Switzerland,  and  spent 
some  time  at  Basle.  Then  passing  through 
the  south  of  France  I  made  my  way  into 
Italy,  passing  through  Florence,  Venice,  Mo- 
dena,  Mikin,  Verona,  and  Turin.  In  April, 
1844,  I  pushed  on  to  the  East.  Egypt  and 
the  Coptic  convents  of  the  Libyan  desert, 
Mount  Sinai  in  Arabia,  Jerusalem,  Bethle- 
hem, and  the  convent  of  St.  Saba  on  the 
shores  of  the  Dead  Sea,  Nazareth  and  its 
neighborhood,  Smj-rna  and  the  island  of  Pat- 
mos,  Beyrout,  Constantinople,  Athens ;  these 
were  the  principal  points  of  my  route,  and 
of  my  researches  in  the  East.  Lastly,  hav- 
ing looked  in  on  my  way  home  on  the  libraries 
of  Vienna  and  Munich,  I  returned  to  Leipzig 
in  January,  1845. 

This  journey  cost  me  five  thousand  dollars. 
You  are  ready  to  ask  how  the  poor  travel- 
ler, who  set  out  from  Leipzig  with  only  a  few 
unpaid  bills,  could  procure  such  sums  as 
these.     I  have  already  partly  given  you  a 


OF   THE    SINAITIC   MANUSCKIPT.  19 

clue  to  explain  tliis,  and  will  more  fully  ac- 
count for  it  as  we  go  on  with  tlie  narrative. 
Such  help  as  I  was  able  to  offer  to  fellow- 
travellers,  a  great  deal  of  kindness  in  return, 
and,  above  all,  that  enthusiasm  which  doas 
not  start  back  from  privations  and  sacrifices, 
will  explain  how  I  got  on.  But  you  are  nat- 
urally more  anxious  to  hear  what  those  labors 
were  to  which  I  devoted  five  years  of  my  life. 

"With  this  view  I  return  to  that  edition  of 
the  New  Testament  of  which  I  have  spoken 
above.  Soon  after  the  Apostles  had  composed 
their  writings,  they  began  to  be  copied,  and 
the  incessant  multiplication  of  copy  npon 
copy  went  on  down  to  the  sixteenth  century, 
w^hen  printing  happily  came  to  replace  the 
labor  of  the  coj^yist.  One  can  easily  see  how 
many  errors  must  inevitably  have  crept  into 
writings  which  were  so  often  reproduced ;  but 
it  is  more  difiicult  still  to  understand  how 
writers  could  allow  themselves  to  bring  in 
here  and  there  changes  not  verbal  only,  but 
such  as  materially  affect  the  meaning,  and, 
what  is  worse  still,  did  not  shrink  from  cut- 
ting out  a  passage  or  inserting  one. 

The  first  editions  of  the  Greek  text,  which 


20         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

appeared  in  the  sixteenth  century,  were  based 
upon  manuscripts  which  happened  to  be  the 
first  to  come  to  hand.  For  a  long  time  men 
were  satisfied  to  reproduce  and  reprint  these 
early  editions.  In  this  way  there  arose  a 
disposition  to  claim  for  this  text,  so  often 
reprinted,  a  peculiar  value,  without  ever  car- 
ing to  ask  whether  it  was  an  exact  reproduc- 
tion or  not  of  the  actual  text  as  it  came  from 
the  Apostles.  But  in  the  course  of  time  man- 
uscripts were  discovered  in  the  public  libra- 
ries of  Europe,  which  were  a  thousand  years 
old,  and  on  comparing  them  with  the  printed 
text,  critics  could  not  help  seeing  how  widely 
the  received  text  departed  in  many  places 
from  the  text  of  the  manuscripts.  We  should 
also  here  add  that  from  the  very  earliest  age 
of  the  Christian  era  the  Greek  text  had  been 
translated  into  different  languages — into  Lat- 
in, Syriac,  Egyptian,  etc.  Ancient  manuscripts 
of  these  versions  were  also  brought  to  light, 
and  it  was  impossible  not  to  see  what  varia- 
tion of  readings  there  had  been  in  the  sacred 
text.  The  quotations  made  by  the  Fathers 
from  as  early  as  the  second  century,  also  con- 
firmed in  another  way  the  fact  of  these  varia- 


or    THE    SINAITIC    MANUSCRIPT.         21 

tions.  In  tliis  way  it  lias  been  placed  beyond 
doubt  that  the  original  text  of  the  Apostles' 
writings,  copied,  recopied,  and  multipled  dur- 
ing fifteen  centuries,  whether  in  Greek  or 
Latin  or  in  other  languages,  had  in  many 
passages  undergone  such  serious  modifica- 
tions of  meaning  as  to  leave  us  in  painful  un- 
certainty as  to  what  the  Apostles  had  actually 
written.^ 

Learned  men  have  again  and  again  at- 
tempted to  clear  the  sacred  text  from  these 
extraneous  elements.  But  we  have  at  last 
hit  upon  a  better  plan  even  than  this,  which 
is  to  set  aside  this  textiis  receptus  altogether, 
and  to  construct  a  fresh  text,  derived  imme- 

*  The  late  Prof.  Moses  Stuart,  a  learned  biblical  scholar 
and  critic,  gave  this  testimony  to  the  general  correctness 
of  the  present  text  of  the  Bible  in  the  original  languages  : 
"  Out  of  some  eight  hundred  thousand  various  readings  of 
the  Bible  that  have  been  collated,  about  seven  hundi'ed 
and  ninety-five  thousand  are  of  just  about  as  much  impor- 
tance to  the  .sense  of  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  Scriptures,  as 
the  question  in  English  orthography  is,  whether  the  word 
honour  shall  be  spelled  with  a  u  or  without  it.  Of  the  re- 
mainder, some  change  the  sense  of  particular  passages  or 
expressions,  or  omit  particular  words  or  phrases,  but  no 
one  doctrine  of  religion  is  changed,  not  one  precept  is 
taken  away,  not  one  important  fact  is  altered  by  the  whole 
of  the  various  readings  collectively  taken." 


22         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERT 

diately  from  tlie  most  ancient  and  authorita- 
tive sources.  This  is  undoubtedly  the  right 
course  to  take,  for  in  this  way  only  can  we 
secure  a  text  approximating  as  closely  as  pos- 
sible to  that  which  came  from  the  Apostles. 

Now  to  obtain  this  we  must  first  make  sure 
of  our  ground  by  thoroughly  studying  the 
documents  which  we  possess.  Well,  in  com- 
pleting my  first  critical  edition  of  the  New 
Testament,  in  1840,  I  became  convinced  that 
the  task,  so  far  from  completed,  was  little 
more  than  begun,  although  so  many  and  such 
celebrated  names  are  found  on  the  list  of 
critical  editors ;  to  mention  only  a  few  out  of 
many :  Erasmus,  Robert  Stephens,  Beza,  Mill, 
Wetstein,  Bengel,  Griesbach,  Matthooi,  and 
Scholz.  This  conviction  led  me  to  begin  my 
travels.  I  formed  the  design  of  revising  and 
examining  with  the  utmost  possible  care,  the 
most  ancient  manuscripts  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment which  were  to  be  found  in  the  libraries 
of  Europe ;  and  nothing  seemed  to  me  more 
suitable,  with  this  end  in  view,  than  to  pub- 
lish separately  with  the  greatest  exactness 
the  most  important  of  these  documents.  I 
should  thus  secure  the  documents  as  the  com- 


OF    THE   SINAITIC   MANUSCEIPT.         23 

mon  property  of  Christendom,  and  insure 
their  safe  keeping  by  men  of  learning  should 
the  originals  themselves  ever  happen  to  per- 
ish. 

I  extended,  for  this  reason,  my  investiga- 
tions to  the  most  ancient  Latin  manuscripts, 
on  account  of  their  great  importance,  without 
passing  by  the  Greek  text  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, which  was  referred  to  by  the  Apostles 
in  preference  to  the  original  Hebrew,  and 
which,  notwithstanding  its  high  authority, 
had  during  the  lapse  of  two  thousand  years 
become  more  corrupt  than  that  of  the  New 
Testament.  I  extended  my  researches  also  to 
the  Apocryphal  books  of  the  New  Testament, 
as  the  present  treatise  will  readily  show. 
These  works  bear  upon  the  canonical  books 
in  more  respects  than  one,  and  throw  con- 
siderable light  on  Christian  antiquity.  The 
greater  number  of  them  were  buried  in  our 
great  libraries,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  any  one 
of  them  has  received  the  attention  which  it 
deserved.  In  the  next  place,  I  proposed  to 
collect  together  all  the  Greek  manuscripts 
which  we  possess,  which  are  of  a  thousand 
years'   antiquit}^,  including  in  the  list  even 


24        NARRATIVE    OF    THE    DISCOVERY 

tliose  wliicli  do  not  bear  on  tlie  Bible,  so  as 
to  exhibit  in  a  way  never  done  before,  when 
and  how  the  different  manuscripts  had  been 
written.  In  this  way  we  should  be  better 
able  to  understand  why  one  manuscript  is  to 
be  referred  to  the  fourth  centui'3%  another  to 
the  fifth,  and  a  third  to  the  eighth,  although 
they  had  no  dates  attached  to  determine 
when  they  were  written. 

Such,  then,  have  been  the  various  objects 
which  I  hoped  to  accomplish  by  my  travels. 
To  some,  all  this  may  seem  mere  learned  la- 
bor: but  permit  me  to  add  that  the  science 
touches  on  life  in  two  important  respects;  to 
mention  only  two  —  to  clear  wp  in  this  way 
the  history  of  the  sacred  text,  and  to  recover 
if  possible  the  genuine  apostolic  text  which 
is  the  foundation  of  our  faith — these  cannot 
be  matters  of  small  importance.  The  whole 
of  Christendom  is,  in  fact,  deeply  interested 
in  these  results.  Of  this  there  can  be  no 
doubt ;  and  the  extraordinary  proofs  of  inter- 
est that  the  Christian  world  has  given  me 
are  alone  a  sufficient  proof  of  this. 

The  literary  treasures  which  I  have  sought 
to  explore  have  been  drawn  in  most  cases 


OF    THE    SINAITIC    MANUSCRIPT.         25 

from  tlie  convents  of  the  East,  where,  for 
ages,  the  pens  of  industrious  monks  have 
copied  the  sacred  writings,  and  collected  man- 
uscripts of  all  kinds.  It  therefore  occurred 
to  me  whether  it  was  not  probable  that  in 
some  recess  of  Greek  or  Coptic,  Sj^rian  or 
Armenian  monasteries,  there  might  be  some 
precious  manuscripts  slumbering  for  ages  in 
dust  and  darkness?  And  would  not  every 
sheet  of  parchment  so  found,  covered  with 
writings  of  the  fifth,  sixth,  and  seventh  cen- 
turies, be  a  kind  of  literary  treasure,  and 
a  valuable  addition  to  our  Christian  litera- 
ture? 

These  considerations  have,  ever  since  the 
year  1842,  fired  me  with  a  strong  desire  to 
visit  the  East.  I  had  just  completed  at  the 
time  a  work  which  had  been  very  favorably 
received  in  Europe,  and  for  which  I  had 
received  marks  of  approval  from  several 
learned  bodies,  and  even  from  crovv^ned 
heads. 

The  work  I  advert  to  was  this.  There  lay 
in  one  of  the  libraries  of  Paris  one  of  the 
most  important  manuscripts  then  known  of 
the  Greek  text.    This  parchment  manuscript, 


2J         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

the  writing  of  wliicli,  of  tlie  date  of  tlie  fiftli 
century,  had  been  retouched  and  renewed  in 
the  seventh,  and  again  in  the  ninth  century, 
had,  in  the  twelfth  century,  been  submitted 
to  a  twofold  process.  It  had  been  washed 
and  pumiced,  to  write  on  it  the  treatises  of 
an  old  father  of  the  church  of  the  name  of 
Ephrem.  Five  centuries  later,  a  Swiss  theo- 
logian of  the  name  of  Wetstein  had  attempt- 
ed to  decipher  a  few  traces  of  the  original 
manuscript ;  and,  later  still,  another  theo- 
logian, Griesbach  of  Jena,  came  to  try  his 
skill  on  it,  although  the  librarian  assured 
liim  that  it  was  impossible  for  mortal  eye  to 
rediscover  a  trace  of  a  writing  which  had 
perished  for  six  centuries.  In  spite  of  these 
unsuccessful  attempts,  the  French  govern- 
ment had  recourse  to  powerful  chemical  re- 
agents, to  bring  out  the  efifaced  characters. 
But  a  Leipzig  theologian,  who  was  then  at 
Paris,  was  so  unsuccessful  in  this  new  at- 
tempt, that  he  asserted  that  it  was  impossi\)le 
to  produce  an  edition  of  this  text,  as  the  man- 
uscript was  quite  illegible.  It  was  after  all 
these  attempts  that  I  began,  in  1841-42,  to 
try  my  skill  at  the  manuscript,  and  had  the 


OF    THE    SINAITIC    MANUSCRIPT.         27 

good  fortune  to  decipher  it  completely,  and 
even  to  distinguish  between  the  dates  of  the 
different  writers  who  had  been  engaged  on 
the  manuscript. 

This  success,  which  procured  for  me  sev- 
eral marks  of  recognition  and  support,  en- 
couraged me  to  proceed.  I  conceived  it  to  be 
my  duty  to  complete  an  undertaking  which 
had  hitherto  been  treated  as  chimerical.  The 
Saxon  government  came  forward  to  support 
me.  The  king,  Frederick  Augustus  II.,  and 
his  distinguished  brother,  John,  sent  me 
marks  of  their  approval ;  and  several  eminent 
patrons  of  learning  at  Frankfort,  Geneva, 
Home,  and  Breslau  generously  offered  to  in- 
terest themselves  in  my  attempt. 

I  here  pass  over  in  silence  the  interesting 
details  of  my  travels — my  audience  with  the 
pope,  Gregory  XVI.,  in  May,  1843 — my  in- 
tercourse with  Cardinal  Mezzofanti,  that  sur- 
prising and  celebrated  linguist — and  I  come 
to  the  result  of  my  journe}^  to  the  East.  It 
was  in  April,  1844,  that  I  embarked  at  Leg- 
horn for  Egypt.  The  desire  which  I  felt  to 
discover  some  precious  remains  of  any  manu- 
scripts, more  especially  Biblical,  of  a  date 


28        NARRATIVE   OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

which  would  carry  us  back  to  the  early  times 
of  Christianity,  was  realized  beyond  my  ex- 
pectations. It  was  at  the  foot  of  Mount 
Sinai,  in  the  convent  of  St.  Catherine,  that  1 
discovered  the  pearl  of  all  my  researches. 
In  visiting  the  ..library  of  the  monaster}^  in 
the  month  of  May,  1844,  I  perceived  in  the 
middle  of  the  great  hall  a  large  and  wide 
basket  full  of  old  parchments;  and  the  libra- 
rian, who  was  a  man  of  information,  told  me 
that  two  heaps  of  papers  like  this,  mouldered 
by  time,  had  been  already  committed  to  the 
flames.  What  was  my  surprise  to  find  amid 
this  heap  of  papers  a  considerable  number  of 
sheets  of  a  copy  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
Greek,  which  seemed  to  me  to  be  one  of  the 
most  ancient  that  I  had  ever  seen.  The  au- 
thorities of  the  convent  allowed  me  to  possess 
myself  of  a  third  of  these  parchments,  or 
about  forty-five  sheets,  all  the  more  readily 
as  they  were  destined  for  the  fire.  But  I 
could  not  get  them  to  yield  up  possession  of 
the  remainder.  The  too  lively  satisfaction 
which  I  had  displayed,  had  aroused  their 
suspicions  as  to  the  value  of  this  manuscript. 
I  transcribed  a  page  of  the  text  of  Isaiah  and 


OF    THE    SINAITIC   MANUSCRIPT.  29 

Jeremiah,  and  enjoined  on  tlie  monks  to  take 
religious  care  of  all  such  remains  which 
might  fall  in  their  way. 

On  my  return  to  Saxony  there  were  men  of 
learning  who  at  once  appreciated  the  value 
of  the  treasure  which  I  brought  back  with 
me.  I  did  not  divulge  the  name  of  the  place 
where  I  had  found  it,  in  the  hopes  of  return- 
ing and  recovering  the  rest  of  the  manuscript. 
I  handed  up  to  the  Saxon  government  my 
rich  collection  of  oriental  manuscripts  in  re- 
turn for  the  paj^ment  of  all  my  travelling  ex- 
penses. I  deposited  in  the  library  of  the 
university  of  Leipzig,  in  the  shape  of  a  col- 
lection which  bears  my  name,  fifty  manu- 
scripts, some  of  which  are  very  rare  and  in- 
teresting. I  did  the  same  with  the  Sinaitic 
fragments,  to  which  I  gave  the  name  of  Co- 
dex Frederick  Augustus,  in  acknowledgment 
of  the  patronage  given  to  me  by  the  king  of 
Saxony ;  and  I  published  them  in  Saxony  in 
a  sumptuous  edition,  in  which  each  letter 
and  stroke  was  exactly  reproduced  by  the 
aid  of  lithography. 

But  these  home  labors  upon  the  manu- 
scripts which  I  had  already  safely  garnered, 


30         NARRATIVE    OF    THE    DISCOVERY 

did  not  allow  me  to  forget  tlie  distant  treas- 
ure wliicli  I  had  discovered.  I  made  use  of 
an  influential  friend,  wlio  then  resided  at  the 
court  of  the  viceroy  of  Egypt,  to  carry  on 
negotiations  for  procuring  the  rest  of  the 
manuscript.  But  his  attempts  were,  unfortu- 
nately, not  successful.  "The  monks  of  the 
convent,"  he  wrote  to  me  to  say,  "have,  since 
your  departure,  learned  the  value  of  these 
sheets  of  iDarchment,  and  will  not  part  with 
them  at  any  price." 

I  resolved,  therefore,  to  return  to  the  East 
to  copy  this  priceless  manuscript.  Having 
set  out  from  Leipzig  in  January,  1853,  I 
embarked  at  Trieste  for  Egypt,  and  in  the 
month  of  February  I  stood,  for  the  second 
time,  in  the  convent  of  Sinai.  This  second 
journey  was  more  successful  even  than  the 
first,  from  the  discoveries  that  I  made  of  rare 
Biblical  manuscripts;  but  I  was  not  able  to 
discover  an}'  further  traces  of  the  treasure  of 
1844.  I  forget:  I  found  in  a  roll  of  papers 
a  little  fragment  which,  written  over  on  both 
sides,  contained  eleven  short  lines  of  the  first 
book  of  Moses,  which  convinced  me  that  the 
manuscript   originally  contained  the   entire 


OF    THE  SINAITIO    MANUSCRIPT.         81 

Old  Testament,  but  tliat  tlie  greater  part  had 
been  long  since  destroyed. 

On  my  return  I  reproduced  in  the  first 
volume  of  a  collection  of  ancient  Christian 
documents  the  page  of  the  Sinaitic  manu- 
script which  I  had  transcribed  in  1844,  with- 
out divulging  the  secret  of  where  I  had  found 
it.  I  confined  myself  to  the  statement  that  I 
claimed  the  distinction  of  having  discovered 
other  documents — no  matter  whether  pub- 
lished in  Berlin  or  Oxford— as  I  assumed 
that  some  learned  travellers  who  had  visited 
the  convent  after  me  had  managed  to  carry 
them  off. 

The  question  now  arose  how  to  turn  to  use 
these  discoveries.  Not  to  mention  a  second 
journey  which  I  made  to  Paris  in  1849,  I 
went  through  Germany,  Switzerland,  and 
England,  devoting  several  years  of  unceasing 
labor  to  a  seventh  edition  of  my  New  Testa- 
ment. But  I  felt  myself  more  and  more  urg- 
ed to  recommence  my  researches  in  the  East. 
Several  motives,  and  more  especially  the 
deep  reverence  of  all  Eastern  monasteries 
for  the  emperor  of  Eussia,  led  me,  in  the 
autumn  of  1856,  to  submit  to  the  Eussian 


32         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

government  a  plan  of  a  journey  for  making 
systematic  researches  in  the  East.  This  pro- 
posal only  aroused  a  jealous  and  fanatical 
oiDposition  in  St.  Petersburg.  People  were 
astonished  that  a  foreigner  and  a  Protestant 
should  presume  to  ask  the  support  of  the  em- 
peror of  the  Greek  and  orthodox  church  for 
a  mission  to  the  East.  But  the  good  cause 
triumphed.  The  interest  which  my  proposal 
excited,  even  within  the  imperial  circle,  in- 
clined the  emperor  in  my  favor.  It  obtained 
his  approval  in  the  month  of  September, 
1858,  and  the  funds  which  I  asked  for  were 
placed  at  my  disposal.  Three  months  sub- 
sequently my  seventh  edition  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  had  cost  me  three  years 
of  incessant  labor,  appeared,  and  in  the  com- 
mencement of  January,  1859,  I  again  set  sail 
for  the  East. 

I  cannot  here  refrain  from  mentioning  the 
peculiar  satisfaction  I  had  experienced  a  lit- 
tle before  this.  A  learned  Englishman,  one 
of  my  friends,  had  been  sent  into  the  East  by 
his  government  to  discover  and  purchase  old 
Greek  manuscripts,  and  spared  no  cost  in 
obtaining  them.     I  had  cause  to  fear,  espe- 


OF   THE   SINAITIC   MANUSCRIPT.         33 

ciallj  for  my  pearl  of  tlie  convent  of  St.  Cath- 
erine ;  but  I  heard  that  he  had  not  succeeded 
in  acquiring  any  thing,  and  had  not  even 
gone  as  far  as  Sinai ;  "  for,"  as  he  said  in  his 
official  report,  "  after  the  *  visit  of  such  an 
antiquarian  and  critic  as  Dr.  Tischendorf,  I 
could  not  expect  any  success."  I  saw  by  this 
how  well  advised  I  had  been  to  reveal  to  no 
one  my  secret  of  18M. 

By  the  end  of  the  month  of  January  I  had 
reached  the  convent  of  Mount  Sinai.  The 
mission  with  which  I  was  intrusted  entitled 
me  to  expect  every  consideration  and  atten- 
tion. The  prior,  on  saluting  me,  expressed 
a  wish  that  I  might  succeed  in  discovering 
fresh  supports  for  the  truth.  His  kind  ex- 
pression of  good  will  was  verified  even  beyond 
his  expectations. 

After  having  devoted  a  few  days  in  turning 
over  the  manuscripts  of  the  convent,  not  with- 
out alighting  here  and  there  on  some  pre- 
cious parchment  or  other,  I  told  my  Bedou- 
ins, on  the  4th  of  February,  to  hold  them- 
selves in  readiness  to  set  out  with  their  drom- 
edaries for  Cairo  on  the  7th,  when  an  entirely 
unexpected  circumstance  carried  me  at  once 

Gospels  Written.  3 


34         NARRATIVE   OF    THE   DISCOYERY 

to  the  goal  of  all  my  desires.  On  the  after- 
noon of  this  day,  I  was  taking  a  walk  with 
the  steward  of  the  convent  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, and  as  we  returned  towards  sunset,  he 
begged  me  to  take  some  refreshment  with 
him  in  his  cell.  Scarcely  had  he  entered  the 
room  when,  resuming  our  former  subject  of 
conversation,  he  said,  "  And  I  too  have  read 
a  Septuagint,  i.  e.,  a  copy  of  the  Greek  trans- 
lation made  by  the  Seventy;"  and  so  saying, 
he  took  down  from  the  corner  of  the  room  a 
bulky  kind  of  volume  wrapped  up  in  a  red 
cloth,  and  laid  it  before  me.  I  unrolled  the 
cover,  and  discovered,  to  my  great  surprise, 
not  only  those  very  fragments  which,  fifteen 
years  before,  I  had  taken  out  of  the  basket, 
but  also  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament, 
the  New  Testament  complete,  and  in  addi- 
tion, the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  and  a  part  of 
the  Pastor  of  Hermas.  Full  of  joy,  which 
this  time  I  had  the  self-command  to  conceal 
from  the  steward  and  the  rest  of  the  commu- 
nity, I  asked,  as  if  in  a  careless  way,  for  per- 
mission to  take  the  manuscript  into  my  sleep- 
ing-chamber, to  look  over  it  more  at  leisure. 
There  by  myself,  I  could  give  way  to  the 


OF   THE    SINAITIC   MANUSCEIPT.         35 

transport  of  joy  whicli  I  felt.  I  knew  that  I 
held  in  my  hand  the  most  precious  Biblical 
treasure  in  existence — a  document  whose  age 
and  importance  exceeded  that  of  all  the  man- 
uscripts which  I  had  ever  examined  during 
twenty  years'  study  of  the  subject.  I  cannot 
now,  I  confess,  recall  all  the  emotions  which 
I  felt  in  that  exciting  moment,  with  such  a 
diamond  in  my  possession.  Though  my  lamp 
was  dim  and  the  night  cold,  I  sat  down  at  once 
to  transcribe  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas.  For 
two  centuries  search  has  been  made  in  vain 
for  the  original  Greek  of  the  first  part  of  this 
epistle,  which  has  been  only  known  through 
a  very  faulty  Latin  translation.  And  yet  this 
letter,  from  the  end  of  the  second  down  to 
the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century,  had  an 
extensive  authority,  since  many  Christians 
assigned  to  it  and  to  the  Pastor  of  Hermas  a 
place  side  by  side  with  the  inspired  writings 
of  the  New  Testament.  This  was  the  very 
reason  why  these  two  writings  were  both 
thus  bound  up  with  the  Sinai  tic  Bible,  the 
transcription  of  which  is  to  be  referred  to 
the  first  half  of  the  fourth  century,  and  about 
the  time  of  the  first  Christian  emperor. 


36         NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERY 

Early  on  the  5tli  of  February,  I  called  upou 
the  steward,  and  asked  permission  to  take 
the  manuscript  with  me  to  Cairo,  to  have  it 
there  transcribed  from  cover  to  cover;  but 
the  prior  had  set  out  only  two  days  before 
also  for  Cairo,  on  his  way  to  Constantinople, 
to  attend  at  the  election  of  a  new  archbishop, 
and  one  of  the  monks  would  not  give  his  con- 
sent to  my  request.  What  was  then  to  be 
done  ?  My  plans  were  quickly  decided.  On 
the  7th,  at  sunrise,  I  took  a  hasty  farewell  of 
the  monks,  in  hopes  of  reaching  Cairo  in  time 
to  get  the  prior's  consent.  Every  mark  of 
attention  was  shown  me  on  setting  out.  The 
Russian  flag  was  hoisted  from  the  convent 
walls,  while  the  hillsides  rang  with  the  ech- 
oes of  a  parting  salute,  and  the  most  distin- 
guished members  of  the  order  escorted  me 
on  my  way  as  far  as  the  plain. 

The  foil-owing  Sunday  I  reached  Cairo, 
where  I  was  received  with  the  same  marks  of 
good-will.  The  prior,  who  had  not  yet  set 
out,  at  once  gave  his  consent  to  my  request, 
and  also  gave  instructions  to  a  Bedouin  to 
go  and  fetch  tlie  manuscript  with  all  speed. 
Mounted  on  his  camel,  in  nine  days  he  went 


OF    THE   SINAITIC   MANUSCRIPT.         37 

from  Cairo  to  Sinai  and  back,  and  on  tlie 
24th  of  February  tlie  priceless  treasure  was 
again  in  my  bands.  The  time  was  now  come 
at  once  boldly  and  without  delay  to  set  to 
work  to  a  task  of  transcribing  no  less  than  a 
hundred  and  ten  thousand  lines,  of  which  a 
great  many  "^ere  difficult  to  read,  either  on 
account  of  later  corrections  or  through  the 
ink  having  faded,  and  that  in  a  climate  where 
the  thermometer,  during  March,  April,  and 
May,  is  never  below  77°  Fahrenheit  in  the 
shade.  No  one  can  say  what  this  cost  me 
in  fatigue  and  exhaustion. 

The  relation  in  which  I  stood  to  the  monas- 
tery gave  me  the  opportunity  of  suggesting  to 
the  monks  the  thought  of  presenting  the  origi- 
nal to  the  emperor  of  Russia,  as  the  natural 
protector  of  the  Greek  orthodox  faith.  The 
proposal  was  favorably  entertained,  but  an 
unexpected  obstacle  arose  to  prevent  its 
being  acted  upon.  The  new  archbishop, 
unanimously  elected  during  Easter  tveek,  and 
whose  right  it  was  to  give  a  final  decision  in 
such  matters,  was  not  yet  consecrated,  or  his 
nomination  even  accepted  by  the  Sublime 
Porte.     And  while  they  were  waiting  for  this 


38        NARRATIVE   OF    THE    DISCOVERY 

douole  solemnity,  the  patriarcli  of  Jerusalem 
protested  so  vigorously  against  the  election, 
that  a  three  months'  delay  must  intervene 
before  the  election  could  be  ratified  and 
the  new  archbishop  installed.  Seeing  this, 
I  resolved  to  set  out  for  Jaffa  and  Jerusa- 
lem. 

Just  at  this  time  the  grand-duke  Constan- 
tine  of  Kussia,  who  had  taken  the  deepest 
interest  in  my  labors,  arrived  at  Jaffa.     I 
accompanied  him  to  Jerusalem.     I  visited 
the  ancient  libraries  of  the  holy  city,  that  of 
the  monastery  of  Saint  Saba,  on  the  shores 
of  the  Dead  sea,  and  then  those  of  Beyrout, 
Ladikia,  Smyrna,  and  Patmos.     These  fresh 
researches  were  attended  with  the  most  hap- 
py results.     At  the  time  desired  I  returned  to 
Cairo  ;  but  here,  instead  of  success,  only  met 
with  a  fresh  disappointment.     The  patriarch 
of  Jerusalem  still  kept  up  his   opposition; 
and  as  he  carried  it  to  the  most  extreme 
lengths,  the  five  representatives  of  the  con- 
vent had  to  remain  at  Constantinople,  where 
they  sought  in  vain  for  an  interview  with  the 
sultan,  to  press  their  rights.      Under  these 
circumstances,  the  monks  of  Mount  Sinai, 


OF   THE    SINAITIC   MANUSCRIPT.         39 

although  willing  to  do  so,  were  unable  to 
carry  out  my  suggestion. 

In  this  embarrassing  state  of  affairs,  the 
archbishop  and  his  friends  entreated  me  to 
use  my  influence  on  behalf  of  the  convent. 
I  therefore  set  out  at  once  for  ConstantinoiDle, 
with  a  yiew  of  there  supporting  the  case  of 
the  five  representatives.  The  prince  Loba- 
now,  Eussian  ambassador  to  Turkey,  received 
me  with  th^  greatest  good- will;  and  as  he 
offered  me  hospitahty  in  his  country-house 
on  the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  I  was  able 
the  better  to  attend  to  the  negotiations  which 
had  brought  me  there.  But  our  irreconcila- 
ble enemy,  the  influential  and  obstinate  pa- 
triarch of  Jerusalem,  still  had  the  upper  hand. 
The  archbishop  was  then  advised  to  appeal 
himself  in  person  to  the  patriarchs,  archbish- 
ops, and  bishops,  and  this  plan  succeeded; 
for  before  the  end  of  the  year  the  right  of  the 
convent  was  recognized,  and  we  gained  our 
cause.  I  myself  brought  back  the  news  of 
our  success  to  Cairo,  and  with  it  I  also  brought 
my  own  special  request,  backed  with  the  sup- 
port of  Prince  Lobanow. 

On  the  27th  of  September.  I  returned  to 


40        NARRATIVE    OF    THE   DISCOVERT 

Cairo.  The  monks  and  arclibisliops  then 
warmly  expressed  their  thanks  for  my  zeal- 
ous efforts  in  their  cause ;  and  the  following 
day  I  received  from  them,  imder  the  form  of 
a  loan,  the  Sinaitic  Bible,  to  carry  it  to  St. 
Petersburg,  and  there  to  have  it  copied  as 
accui'ately  as  possible. 

I  set  out  for  Egypt  early  in  October,  and 
on  the  19th  of  November  I  presented  to  their 
imperial  majesties,  in  the  Winter  Palace  at 
Tsarkoe-Selo,  my  rich  collection  of  old  Greek, 
Syriac,  Coptic,  Arabic,  and  other  manu- 
scripts, in  the  middle  of  which  the  Sinaitic 
Bible  shone  like  a  crown.  I  then  took  the 
opportunity  of  submitting  to  the  emperor 
Alexander  II.  a  proposal  of  making  an  edi- 
tion of  this  Bible  worthy  of  the  work  and  of 
the  emperor  himself,  and  which  should  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest  undertakings 
in  critical  and  Biblical  study. 

I  did  not  feel  free  to  accept  the  brilliant 
offers  that  were  made  to  mo  to  settle  finally, 
or  even  for  a  few  years,  in  the  Russian  capi- 
ital.  It  was  at  Leipzig,  therefore,  at  the  end 
of  three  years,  and  afier  three  journeys  to 
St.  Petersburg,  that  I  was  able  to  carry  to 


OF    THE    SINAITIC    MANUSCEIPT.         41 

completion  the  laborious  task  of  producing 
2i,  facsimile  copy  of  tliis  codex  in  four  folio 
volumes. 

In  the  month  of  October,  1862,  I  repaired 
to  St.  Petersburg  to  present  this  edition  to 
their  majesties.  The  emperor,  who  had  lib- 
erally provided  for  the  cost,  and  who  ap- 
proved the  proposal  of  this  superb  manu- 
script appearing  on  the  celebration  of  the 
Millenary  Jubilee  of  the  Eussian  monarchy, 
has  distributed  impressions  of  it  throughout 
the  Christian  world;  which,  without  distinc- 
tion of  creed,  have  expressed  their  recogni- 
tion of  its  value.  Even  the  pope,  in  an  auto- 
graph letter,  has  sent  to  the  editor  his  con- 
gratulations and  admiration.  It  is  only  a 
few  months  ago  that  the  two  most  celebrated 
universities  of  England,  Cambridge  and  Ox- 
ford, desired  to  show  me  honor  by  conferring 
on  me  their  highest  academic  degree.  "  I 
would  rather,"  said  an  old  man,  himself  of 
the  highest  distinction  for  learning  —  "I 
would  rather  have  discovered  this  Sinaitic 
manuscript  than  the  Koh-i-noor  of  the  queen 
of  England." 

But  that  which  I  think  more  highly  of  than 


42  NARRATIVE,    ETC. 

all  these  flattering  distinctions  is,  the  convic- 
tion that  Providence  has  given  to  our  age,  in 
which  attacks  on  Christianity  are  so  common, 
the  Sinaitic  Bible,  to  be  to  us  a  full  and  clear 
light  as  to  what  is  the  word  written  by  God, 
and  to  assist  us  in  defending  the  truth  by 
establishing  its  authentic  form. 


WHEN 
WERE  OUR  GOSPELS  WRITTEN? 


CHAPTER  I. 

ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY. 

And  now  what  sliall  we  say  respecting  the 
life  of  Jesus  ?  What  do  we  certainly  know 
on  this  subject? 

This  question  has  been  much  discussed 
in  our  days.  It  is  well  known  that  several 
learned  men  have,  quite  recently,  written 
works  on  the  life  of  Jesus,  purporting  to 
prove  that  he  whom  Christianity  claims  as 
our  Saviour  did  not  really  live  the  life  that 
the  gospels  record  of  him.  These  works, 
which  have  been  very  freely  circulated,  have 
found  a  large  number  of  readers.  It  may  be 
that  there  are  some  points  not  yet  fully  under- 
stood, but  this  at  least  is  undeniable,  that  the 


44  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

tendency  of  tlie  works  referred  to  is  to  rob  tlie 
Saviour  of  his  divine  cliaracter. 

But  perhaps  it  will  be  said  that  the  Deity 
of  Christ  is  not  an  essential  element  of  Chris- 
tianity. Does  there  not  remain  to  us  its 
sublime  system  of  morals,  even  though  Christ 
were  not  the  Son  of  God  ?  To  reason  in  this 
way  seems  to  us  to  imply  either  that  we  have 
no  idea  at  all  of  what  Christianity  is,  or,  which 
comes  to  the  same  thing,  that  we  have  an 
essentially  wrong  idea.  Christianity  does  not, 
strictly  speaking,  rest  on  the  moral  teaching 
of  Jesus,  however  sublime  that  is,  but  it  rests 
on  his  person  only.  It  is  on  the  person  of 
Christ  that  the  church  is  founded ;  this  is  its 
corner-stone  ;  it  is  on  this  the  doctrines  which 
Jesus  and  his  apostles  taught,  rest  as  the 
foundation  truth  of  all.  And  if  we  are  in 
error  in  believing  in  the  person  of  Christ  as 
taught  us  in  the  gospels,  then  the  church  her- 
self is  in  error,  and  must  be  given  up  as  a 
deception. 

The  link  then  which  unites  the  church  to 
the  person  of  Clirist  is  so  close,  that  to  deter- 
mine the  nature  of  that  Person,  is  to  her  the 
vital  question  of  all.     The  Christian  world  is 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  4.5 

perfectly  sure  that  it  is  so,  and  I  need  appeal 
to  no  other  fact  than  her  anxiety  to  know  all 
that  can  be  known  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  since 
the  nature  of  his  person  can  only  be  known 
through  his  life. 

All  the  world  knows  that  our  gospels  are 
nothing  else  than  biographies  of  Christ.  We 
must  also  frankly  admit  that  we  have  no 
other  source  of  information  with  respect  to 
the  life  of  Jesus  than  the  sacred  writings.  In 
fact,  whatever  the  early  ages  of  the  church 
report  to  us  concerning  the  person  of  Christ 
from  any  independent  source  is  either  de- 
rived from  the  gospels,  or  is  made  up  of  a  few 
insignificant  details  of  no  value  in  themselves, 
and  sometimes  drawn  from  hostile  sources. 
These  are  the  only  sources  fi'om  which  oppo- 
nents of  the  life  of  Christ,  of  his  miraculous 
ministry  and  his  divine  character,  draw  their 
attacks  on  the  credibility  of  the  four  gos- 
pels. 

But  it  will  then  be  said.  How  has  it  been 
possible  to  impugn  the  credibility  of  the  gos- 
pels— of  these  books  which  St.  Matthew  and 
St.  John,  the  immediate  disciples  and  .^pos- 
tles  of  the  Lord,  and  St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke, 


46  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

the  friends  and  companions  of  the  apostles, 
have  written  ? 

It  is  in  this  way :  by  denying  that  the  gos- 
pels were  written  by  the  authors  whose  names 
they  bear.  And  if  you  ask  me,  in  the  next 
place,  why  it  is  that  so  much  stress  is  laid 
on  this  point,  I  will  answer,  that  the  testi- 
mony of  direct  eye-witnesses,  like  John  and 
Matthew,  or  of  men  intimately  connected  with 
these  eye-witnesses,  like  Mark  and  Luke,  are 
entitled  for  this  very  reason,  to  be  believed, 
and  their  writings  to  be  received  as  trust- 
worthy. The  credibility  of  a  writer  clearly 
depends  on  the  interval  of  time  which  lies 
between  him  and  the  events  which  he  de- 
scribes. The  farther  the  narrator  is  removed 
fi'om  the  facts  which  he  la}'S  before  us,  the 
more  his  claims  to  credibility  are  reduced  in 
value.  "When  a  considerable  space  of  time 
intervenes,  the  writer  can  only  report  to  us 
what  he  has  heard  from  intermediary  wit- 
nesses, or  read  of  in  writers  who  are  perhaps 
undeserving  of  credit.  Now  the  opponents 
of  our  gospels  endeavor  to  assign  them  to 
writers  of  this  class  who  were  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  give  a  really  credible  testimon}";  to 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  47 

writers  who  only  composed  their  narratives 
long  after  the  time  when  Christ  lived,  by  put- 
ting together  all  the  loose  reports  which  cir- 
culated about  his  person  and  work.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  they  undermine  the  credit  of 
the  gospels,  by  detaching  them  completely 
from  the  evangelists  whose  names  they  bear. 

This  would  certainly  be  a  most  effectual 
way  of  overturning  the  dignity  and  authority 
of  the  gospels. 

There  is  another  plan  even  more  likely  to 
effect  the  same  end,  and  which  they  have  not 
failed  to  have  recourse  to.  There  are  men 
who  call  themselves  enlightened  who  think 
that  common  sense  is  quite  superior  to  Divine 
revelation,  and  who  pretend  to  e:xplain  the 
miracles  of  Scripture,  either  by  the  imperfect 
ideas  of  these  times,  or  by  a  certain  preju- 
diced theory  of  the  Old  Testament,  or  by  a 
sort  of  accommodation,  according  to  which 
Jesus  adapted  his  words  and  deeds  to  meet 
the  hopes  of  the  Jews,  and  so  passed  himself 
off  among  them  as  something  greater  than 
he  really  was. 

This  exaltation  of   common  sense  is  not 
without  its  attractions  for  men  of  the  world. 


48  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

It  is  easily  understood,  and  so,  little  by  little, 
it  has  become  our  modern  form  of  unbelief. 
Men  have  withdrawn  themselves  from  God 
and  Christianity,  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that  many  of  these  empty  and  sonorous 
phrases  about  liberty  and  dignity  of  man 
have  contributed  not  a  little  to  this  result. 
"  Do  not  believe,"  they  will  tell  you,  "  that 
man  is  born  in  sin  and  needs  to  be  redeemed. 
He  has  a  nature  which  is  free,  and  which  has 
only  to  be  elevated  to  all  that  is  beautiful  and 
good,  in  order  that  he  may  properly  enjoy 
life."  Once  admit  this,  and  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  this  kind  of  unbelief  will  soon  make  way 
with  the  gospels,  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the 
Scriptures.  It  will  despise  them  as  the  ex- 
pressions of  an  antiquated  and  bygone  state 
of  feeling,  and  will  shake  them  off  as  cum- 
brous chains,  as  soon  as  it  can. 

The  volume  which  appeared  in  Paris  in 
1863  and  which  has  since  made  such  a  stir 
in  the  world.  La  Vie  de  Je-sm,  by  M.  Renan, 
is  one  of  the  fruits  of  this  unbelief.  This 
work  has  nothing  in  common  with  those  that 
loyally  and  honestly  inquire  into  the  facts  of 
the  case.     It  is  written  on  most  arbitrary 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  49 

principles  of  its  own,  and  is  nothing  else  than 
a  caricature  of  history  from  beginning  to  end. 
Can  we  suppose,  for  instance,  that  M.  Eenan 
seriously  believes  his  own  theory,  that  St. 
John  wrote  his  gospel  because  his  vanity 
was  offended,  either  through  jealousy  of  St. 
Peter  or  hatred  of  Judas?  Or,  when  he  ac- 
counts for  the  interest  of  the  wife  of  Pilate  in 
Jesus  in  these  terms,  that  "she  had  possibly 
seen  the  fair  young  Galilean  from  some  win- 
dow of  the  palace  which  opened  on  the  tem- 
ple court.  Or  perhaps  she  saw  him  in  a 
dream,  and  the  blood  of  the  innocent  young 
man  who  was  about  to  be  condemned  gave 
her  the  nightmare."  Again,  when  he  attempts 
to  explain  the  resurrection  of  Lazarus  by  a 
deception  of  this  same  Lazarus,  which  was 
afterwards  found  out  by  Jesus,  and  by  an  act 
of  extravagance  of  his  sisters,  which  is  excusa- 
ble on  account  of  their  fanaticism.  "Laza- 
rus," M.  Eenan  says,  "yet  pale  with  sickness, 
had  himself  wrapped  up  in  grave-clothes,  and 
laid  in  the  family  sepulchre." 

These  examples,  which  we  could  easily  add 
to  if  Ave  did  not  wish  to  avoid  giving  our 
readers  unnecessary  pain,  seem  to  us  suffi- 

Oospela  Written.  4: 


50  THE   DATE   OF   THE    GOSPELS. 

cient  to  give  our  readers  an  idea  of  M.  Ee- 
nan's  book ;  and  since,  in  spite  of  all  its 
frivolity,  its  historical  inconsistency,  and  its 
tasteless  disfigurement  of  facts,  this  produc- 
tion has  made,  even  in  Germany,  such  an 
impression,  is  it  not  plain,  that  alas !  even 
among  us,  infidelity  is  widely  diffused?  — 
partly  produced  by,  and  partly  the  cause,  in 
return,  of  our  ignorance  of  the  history  of  the 
Bible. 

For  this  book  of  Kenan's,  German  learning 
is  in  a  certain  sense  responsible.  The  manner 
of  handling  the  Bible  which  we  have  described 
already,  and  which  consists  in  setting  com- 
mon sense  above  revelation,  took  its  rise  on 
the  soil  of  Germany.  M.  Kenan  sets  out  with 
this  principle,  and  there  are  not  wanting 
learned  men  in  Germany  who  endeavor  to 
give  it  completeness,  by  supplying  it  with  the 
scientific  base  which  it  wants.  This  leads 
us,  quite  naturally,  to  speak  of  the  direct  at- 
tacks against  the  authenticity  and  apostolic 
authority  of  the  gospels,  though,  as  far  as 
this  French  work  is  concerned,  it  is  written 
in  too  thin  and  superficial  a  style  to  be  of 
much   account   one  way  or   the  other,  and 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  51 

would  certainly  not  have  mncli  effect  in  sha- 
king any  thinking  person  in  his  belief  in  the 
gospel,  or  cause  him,  without  further  inquiry, 
to  give  up  the  traditional  view,  that  the  gos- 
pels really  came  from  the  writers  to  whom 
the  church  refers  them. 

To  know  what  we  are  to  believe  in  this 
matter,  we  must  carefully  examine  the  proofs 
which  our  adversaries  bring  forward.  The 
chief  points  in  their  case  are  the  assertions 
which  they  make,  and  preiend  to  support  by 
history  of  the  second  century — that  the  gos- 
pels did  not  see  the  light  till  after  the  end  of 
the  apostolic  age.  To  support  this  point, 
they  appeal  to  the  testimony  of  the  most  an- 
cient church  literature.  They  maintain  that 
the  Christian  writings  composed  immediately 
after  the  apostles  do  not  show  any  trace  of 
acquaintance  with  the  gospels  which  we  pos- 
sess, and  especially  with  that  of  St,  John,  and 
they  conclude  that  the  gospels  could  not,  con- 
sequently, have  been  in  existence. 

If  this  assertion  of  theirs  is  well-founded — ■ 
if  there  exists  such  a  Christian  literature  as 
they  speak  of,  that  is,  a  series  of  works  writ- 
ten between  the  end  of  the  first  centurv  and 


52  THE   DATE    OF    THE   GOSPELS. 

the  middle  of  the  second,  and  if  we  do  not 
find  in  these  writings  any  reference  to  onr 
gospels,  then  I  should  admit  that  the  faith  of 
the  church,  which  teaches  that  the  gospels 
were  written  during  the  second  half  of  the 
first  century,  would  be  seriously  compro- 
mised. Against  such  an  assertion  as  this  we 
could  only  raise  one  objection :  we  should 
ask  if  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  literature 
absolutely  and  inevitably  required  that  it 
should  refer  to  and  quote  the  gospels,  and 
whether  we  should  be  entitled,  from  its  si- 
lence on  the  subject  of  the  gospels,  to  claim 
such  an  inference  as  this  ? — for  it  is  conceiv- 
able that  many  excellent  things  might  have 
been  written  on  the  subject  without  any  di- 
rect reference  to  the  gospels.  But  what  could 
they  say  if  the  direct  contrary  were  clearly 
proved  ?  I  mean,  if  we  were  to  find  in  works 
written  a  little  after  the  apostolic  age,  di- 
rect quotations  from  the  gospels;  or  if  we 
see  them  treated  with  the  greatest  respect, 
or  perhaps  even  already  treated  as  canoni- 
cal and  sacred  writings?  In  this  case,  it 
would  be  beyond  doubt  that  our  gospels 
were  really  composed  in  the  apostolic  age — 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  53 

a  conclusion  which  our  opponents  resist  and 
deny  with  all  their  might. 

The  writer  of  this  pamphlet,  in  common 
with  many  other  impartial  critics,  is  firmly 
convinced  that  a  conscientious  examination  of 
the  question  proves  precisely  the  very  oppo- 
site to  that  which  the  adversaries  of  the  gos- 
pel affirm ;  and  this  is  especially  true  of  the 
gospel  of  St.  John,  the  most  important  of  the 
four.  To  throw  Hght  on  this  important  ques- 
tion, we  must  enter  without  delay  on  this 
inquiry,  and  ascertain  as  clearly  as  possible 
whether  the  most  primitive  Christian  litera- 
ture bears  any  testimony  for  or  against  our 
evangelists.  * 

To  do  this,  let  us  transport  ourselves  back 
to  the  last  half  of  the  second  century, 
and  inquire  how  the  Christian  church  of 
that  day  thought  of  the  four  evangeHcal  nar- 
ratives. 

The  first  thing  which  strikes  us  is,  that  in 
all  parts  of  the  church  the  four  evangeHsts 
were  treated  as  a  part  of  holy  Scripture. 
The  church  fathers  of  that  age,  belonging  to 
many  different  countries,  have  written  works 
in  which  they  are  very  frequently  quoted,  and 


54:  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

are  always  treated  as  sacred  and  aj)ostolic 
writings. 

At  Lyons,  where  the  first  Christian  church 
in  Gaul  was  founded,  the  bishop  Irenaeus 
wrote,  at  the  end  of  the  second  century,  a 
great  work  on  those  early  gnostic  heresies, 
which  arbitrarily  attempted  to  overturn  the 
doctrine  of  the  church ;  and  in  combating 
these  errors,  he  made  a  general  use  of  the 
gospels.  The  number  of  the  passages  which 
he  refers  to  is  about  four  hundred ;  and  the 
direct  quotations  from  St.  John  alone  exceed 
eighty. 

We  may  say  as  much  for  the  energetic 
and  learned  TertuUian,  who  lived  at  Carthage 
about  the  end  of  the  second  century.  His 
numerous  writings  contain  several  hundred 
passages  taken  from  the  gospels ;  two  hun- 
dred of  these,  at  least,  taken  from  St.  John. 

It  is  the  same  with  Clement,  the  celebrated 
teacher  of  the  catechetical  school  of  Alexan- 
dria, in  Egypt,  who  also  lived  about  the  end 
of  the  second  century. 

Add  to  these  three  testimonies  a  catalogue 
which  bears  the  name  of  Muratori,  its  discov- 
erer, and  which  enumerates  the  books  of  the 


ECCLESIASTICA.L   TESTIMONY.  55 

New  Testament  which  from  the  first  were 
considered  canonical  and  sacred.  This  cata- 
logue was  written  a  little  after  the  age  of 
Pius  II.— A.  D.  142-157— about  A.  d.  170,  and 
probably  in  Rome  itself;  and  at  the  head  of 
the  list  it  places  our  four  gospels.  It  is  true 
that  the  first  lines  of  this  fragment,  which 
refer  to  Matthew  and  Mark,  have  perished, 
but  immediately  after  the  blank  the  name  of 
Luke  appears  as  the  third,  and  that  of  John 
as  the  fourth ;  so  that,  even  in  this  remote 
age,  we  find  even  the  order  in  which  our  evan- 
gelists follow  each  other  thus  early  attested 
to — Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John. 

Let  us  quote  two  other  witnesses,  one  of 
whom  carries  us  back  to  an  antiquity  even 
more  remote.  We  here  refer  to  the  two  most 
ancient  versions  made  of  the  New  Testament. 
One  of  these  translations  is  into  Syriac,  and 
is  called  the  Peschito ;  the  other,  in  Latin, 
is  known  by  the  name  of  the  Italic  ;  and  both 
assign  the  first  place  to  the  four  evangelists. 
The  canonical  authority  of  these  four  gospel 
narratives  must  have  been  completely  recog- 
nized and  established  in  the  mother  church 
before  they  would  have  been  translated  into 


50  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

the  dialect  of  the  daughter  churches,  Syriac 
and  Latin. 

"When  are  we  to  say  that  this  took  place  ? 
The  Syi'iac  version,  which  carries  us  as  far 
east  as  to  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  is  gen- 
erally assigned  to  the  end  of  the  second  cen- 
tury, and  not  without  good  reasons,  though 
we  have  not  any  positive  proof  to  offer.  The 
Latin  version  had  acquired,  even  before  this 
period,  a  certain  public  authority.  Thus  the 
Latin  translator  of  the  great  work  of  Irenoeus, 
written  in  Greek,  which  we  assign  to  the  end 
of  the  second  century — TertuUian,  in  fact, 
copies  this  translator  in  the  quotations  which 
he  makes  from  L'ena3us — aud  TertuUian  also, 
at  the  end  of  the  same  century,  follow  the 
Italic  version.  The  estimation  in  which  the 
Latin  version  of  the  gospel  was  then  held 
necessarily  supposes  that  this  translation 
must  have  been  made  some  ten  or  twenty 
years  at  least  before  this.  It  is  then  a  well- 
established  fact  that  already,  between  A.  D. 
150  and  200,  not  only  were  the  gospels  trans- 
lated into  Latin  and  Syriac,  but  also  that 
their  number  was  defined  to  be  four  only, 
neither  more  nor  less;  and  this  remarkable 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  57 

fact  is  well  calculated  to  throw  liglit  on  tlie 
question  of  tlieir  true  age  and  origin.  We 
sliall  return  to  this  farther  on. 

Let  us  pause  here  to  consider  again  these 
two  great  church  teachers,  Irenseus  and  Ter- 
tullian.     Their  testimony  is  decisive;  and  no 
one,  even  among  those  who  deny  the  authen- 
ticity of  St.  John,  is  able  to  question  it.    "We 
have  here  only  to  inquire  whether  their  testi- 
mony is  to  be  limited  to  the  time  only  when 
they  wrote;  that  is  to  say,  whether  it  proves 
nothing  more  than  the  high  consideration  in 
which  the  evangelists  were  held  at  the  time 
when  they  wrote.     In  his  refutation  of  these 
false  teachers,  Irenaeus  not  only  refers  to  the 
four  gospels  with  perfect  confidence  and  with 
the  most  hteral  exactness,  but  he  even  re- 
marks that  there  are  necessarily  four,  nei- 
ther more  nor  less ;  and  in  proof  of  this  he 
adduces  comparisons  from  the  four  quarters 
of  the  world,  the  four  principal  winds,  and 
the  four  figures  of  the  cherubim.     He  says 
that  the  four  evangehsts  are  the  four  columns 
of  the  church,  which  is  extended  over  the 
whole  world,  and  sees  in  this  number  four  a 
peculiar  appointment  of  the  Creator  of  the 


58  THE   DATE   OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

world.  I  ask  tlien,  is  such  a  statement  con- 
sistent with  the  assertion  that  the  four  gos- 
pels first  became  of  authority  about  the  time 
of  Irengeus,  and  that  Christians  then  set  up 
•a  fourth  and  later  gospel,  that  of  St.  John, 
besides  the  other  three  older  gospels  ?  Are 
we  not  indeed  constrained  to  admit  that  their 
authority  was  already  then  ancient  and  estab- 
lished, and  that  their  number  four  was  a 
matter  already  so  undisputed  that  the  bishop 
Irenaeus  could  justify  and  explain  it  in  his 
own  peculiar  way,  as  we  have  just  now  seen  ? 
Irenaeus  died  in  the  second  year  of  the  third 
century;  but  in  his  youth  he  had  sat  at  the 
feet  of  the  aged  Polycarp ;  and  Poljxarp,  in 
his  turn,  had  been  a  disciple  of  the  evangelist 
St.  John,  and  had  conversed  with  other  eye- 
witnesses of  the  gospel  narrative.  Irenaous, 
in  speaking  of  his  own  personal  recollections, 
gives  us  Polj'carp's  own  account  of  that  which 
he  had  heard  from  the  lips  of  St.  John  and 
other  disciples  of  our  Lord,  and  expressly 
adds  that  all  these  Avords  agree  with  Scrip- 
ture. But  let  us  hear  his  own  words,  as  con- 
tained in  a  letter  to  Florinus : 

"When  I  was  yet  a  child,  I  saw  thee  at 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  59 

Smyrna  in  Asia  Minor,  at  Polycarp's  house, 
wliere  thou  wert  distinguished  at  court,  and 
obtained  the  regard  of  the  bisho^D.     I  can 
more  distinctly  recollect  things  which  hap- 
pened then   than   others   more   recent;  for 
events  which  happened  in  infancy  seem  to 
grow  with  the  mind,  and  to  become  part  of 
ourselves ;  so  that  I  can  recall  the  very  place 
where  Polycarp  used  to   sit   and  teach,  his 
manner  of  speech,  his  mode  of  life,  his  ap- 
pearance, the  style  of  his  address  to  the  peo- 
ple, his  frequent  references  to  St.  John  and 
to  others  who  had  seen  our  Lord;  how  he 
used  to  repeat  from  memory  their  discourses, 
which  he  had  heard  from  them  concerning 
our  Lord,  his  miracles  and  mode  of  teaching, 
and  how,  being  instructed  himself  by  those 
who  were  eye-witnesses  of  the  word,  there 
was  in  all  that  he  said  a  strict  agreement 
with  the  Scriptures." 

This  is  the  account  which  L'enseus  himself 
gives  of  his  connectioif  with  Polycarp,  and  of 
the  truths  which  he  had  learned  from  him. 
Who  will  now  venture  to  question  whether 
this  father  had  ever  heard  a  word  from  Poly- 
carp about  the  gospel  of  St.  John?     The 


CO  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

time  when  Irenseus,  tlien  a  young  man,  was 
known  to  Polycarp,  wlio  died  a  martyr  at 
Smyrna  about  A.  D.  1G5,  could  not  liave  been 
later  than  A.  D.  150 ;  yet  they  would  have  us 
believe  that  Irenrous  had  not  then  heard  a 
word  from  his  master  Polj^carp  about  the 
gospel  of  St.  John,  when  he  so  often  recalls 
the  discourses  of  this  apostle.  Any  testi- 
mony of  Polycarp  in  favor  of  the  gospel  refers 
us  back  to  the  evangelist  himself ;  for  Poly- 
carp, in  speaking  to  Irenseus  of  this  gospel 
as  a  work  of  his  master  St.  John,  must  have 
learned  from  the  lips  of  the  apostle  himself 
whether  he  was  its  author  or  not.  There  is 
nothing  more  damaging  to  these  doubters  of 
the  authenticity  of  St.  John's  gospel  than  this 
testimony  of  Polycarp ;  and  there  is  no  get- 
ting rid  of  this  difficulty,  unless  by  setting 
aside  the  genuineness  of  the  testimony  itself. 
This  fact  also  becomes  more  striking  if  we 
consider  it  under  another  aspect.  What  I 
mean  is  this:  those  who  deny  the  authen- 
ticity of  St.  John's  gospel  say  that  this  gos- 
pel only  appeared  about  A.  D.  150,  and  that 
Polycarp  never  mentioned  the  gospel  as  such 
to  Irenaeus.     But  in  this  case,  can  we  sup- 


ECCLESIASTICAL    TESTIMONY.  61 

pose  that  Irenseus  would  have  believed  in  the 
autlienticity  of  this  gospel,  a  work  that  pro- 
fessed to  be  the  most  precious  legacy  of  St. 
John  to  the  Christian  church,  as  the  narra- 
tive of  an  eye-witness  and  an  intimate  friend 
of  the  Eedeemer,  and  a  gospel  whose  inde- 
pendent character,  as  regards  the  other  three, 
seemed  to  take  av/ay  something  from  their 
authority?  The  very  fact  that  such  a  work 
of  St.  John  had  never  once  been  mentioned 
to  him  by  Polycarp  would  have  at  once  con- 
vinced Irenseus  that  it  w^as  an  audacious  im- 
posture. And  are  we  to  believe  that  Irenseus 
would  produce  such  a  forgery  as  this  with 
which  to  reply  to  these  false  teachers,  who 
themselves  falsified  Scripture,  and  appealed 
to  apocryphal  writings  as  if  they  were  genu- 
ine and  inspired?  And  are  we  further  to 
suppose  that  he  would  have  linked  such  a 
writing  up  with  the  other  three  gospels,  to 
combine  what  he  calls  a  quadruple  or  four- 
sided  gospel?  What  a  tissue  of  contradic- 
tions; or  rather,  to  use  the  right  word,  of 
absurdities. 

These  arguments,  as  we  have  just  stated 
them,  are  not  new ;  they  are  at  least  found  in 


62  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

Irenseus.  Tliej  have  been  stated  before,  but 
they  have  scarcely  ever  received  the  consid- 
eration which  they  deserve.  For  our  part, 
we  think  serious  and  reflecting  men  quite 
right  in  attaching  more  weight  to  these  his- 
toric proofs  of  Iren£eus,  derived  from  Poly- 
carp  in  favor  of  the  authenticity  of  St.  John's 
gospel  than  to  those  scruples  and  negations 
of  learned  men  of  our  day,  who  are  smitten 
with  a  strange  passion  for  doubt. 

We  say  as  much  for  TertuUian  and  his  tes- 
timony. This  man,  who  from  an  advocate  of 
j)aganism  became  a  powerful  defender  of  the 
Christian  truth,  takes  such  a  scrupulous  view 
of  the  origin  and  worth  of  the  four  evange- 
lists that  he  will  allow  to  Mark  and  Luke,  as 
apostolic  men,  that  is,  as  companions  and 
assistants  of  the  apostles,  a  certain  subordi- 
nate place,  while  he  upholds  the  full  authority 
of  John  and  of  Matthew,  on  account  of  theii 
cliaracter  of  real  apostles,  chosen  by  the  Lord 
himself.  In  his  work  against  Marcion,  (bouk 
4,  chap.  5,)  TertuUian  lays  down  the  princi- 
ple by  which  we  should  decide  on  the  truth 
of  the  articles  of  the  Christian  faith,  and 
especially  of  that  most  important  one  of  all, 


ECCLESIASTICAL     TESTIMONY.  63 

tlie  authenticity  of  the  apostoHc  -writings. 
For  this,  he  makes  the  value  of  a  testimony 
to  depend  on  its  antiquity,  and  decides  that 
we  are  to  hold  that  to  be  true  for  us  which 
was  held  to  be  true  in  former  ages.  This 
appeal  to  antiquity  leads  us  back  to  the 
apostles'  day,  and  in  deciding  what  is  the 
authenticity  of  any  writing  which  claims  to  be 
apostolic,  we  must  refer  to  those  churches 
which  were  planted  by  the  apostles.  I  ask, 
then,  is  it  creditable  in  any  degree  that  this 
man,  so  sagacious,  could  have  acted  hastily 
and  uncritically^  in  accepting  the  credibility 
and  authenticity  of  the  four  evangelists? 
The  passages  I  have  referred  to  are  taken 
from  his  celebrated  reply  to  Marcion,  who, 
on  his  own  authority,  and  in  conformity  with 
his  own  heretical  tastes,  had  attacked  the 
sacred  text.  Of  the  four  gospels,  Marcion 
had  completely  rejected  three  ;  and  the 
fourth,  that  of  St.  Luke,  he  had  modified  and 
mutilated  according  to  his  own  caprice. 
Tertullian,  in  his  reply,  formally  appeals  to 
the  testimony  of  the  apostolic  churches  in 
favor  of  the  four  gospels.  Is  such  a  challenge 
as  this,  in  the  mouth  of  such  a  man  as  Ter- 


G'i  THE    DATE    OF    THE   GOSPELS. 

tullian,  to  be  passed  bj  as  of  no  weight. 
Wlien  lie  TVTote  his  reply  to  Marcion,  the 
apostle  St.  John  had  been  dead  only  about  a 
century.  The  church  of  Ephesus,  among 
whom  the  apostle  St.  John  had  so  long  lived, 
and  in  which  city  he  died,  had  surely  time  to 
decide  the  question,  once  for  all,  whether  the 
gospel  of  St.  John  was  authentic  or  not.  It 
was  not  difficult  to  find  out  vrhat  was  the 
judgment  of  the  apostolic  church  on  this 
question.  Moreover,  we  must  not  forget  that 
in  Tertullian  we  have  not  merely  a  man  of 
erudition,  occupied  in  laying  down  learned 
theses;  but  a  man  of  serious  mind,  to  whom 
a  question  like  this  was  one  on  which  his  faith, 
and  with  it  the  salvation  of  his  soul,  depend- 
ed. Is  it,  then,  likely  that  such  a  man  would 
have  given  eas}^  credence  to  writings  like 
these,  which  concern  the  fundamental  doc- 
trines of  Christianity  —  writings  which  dis- 
tinctly claimed  to  bo  apostolic,  and  at  which 
the  wisdom  of  the  world  in  which  he  had 
been  educated  professed  to  be  offended? 
Now,  as  Tertullian  asserts  in  exj^ress  terms, 
that  in  defending  the  apostolic  origin  of  the 
four  evangelists  ho  rests  his  case  upon  the 


ECCLESIASTICAL    TESTIMONY.  65 

testimony  of  the  apostolic  churches,  we  must 
be  incorrigible  skeptics  to  suspect  any  longer 
that  he  had  thoroughly  examined  for  himself 
into  the  origin  of  these  gospels. 

We  maintain,  then,  that  the  attestations  of 
Irenseus  and  Tertullian  have  a  weight  and  a 
worth  beyond  the  mere  range  of  their  own 
age.  These  attestations  carry  us  up  to  the 
first  four  witnesses,  and  the  evidence  which 
they  depose  is  in  favor  of  these  primitive 
times.  This  is  the  conclusion  which  we  think 
we  are  warranted  in  drawing;  and  it  is  best 
established,  not  only  by  those  more  ancient 
witnesses  above  referred  to  and  given  by  the 
writer  of  the  list  of  books  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament known  as  the  Muratori  catalogue,  as 
well  as  the  author  of  the  Italic  version,  but 
also  by  the  consent  of  the  church  and  the 
uncontradicted  records  of  the  earliest  times 
prior  to  those  of  Irenseus  and  Tertullian. 

My  reader  has  doubtless  heard  of  those 
works  called  "Harmonies  of  the  Gospels,"  in 
which  the  four  narratives  are  moulded  and 
fused  into  one.  They  sought  in  this  way  to 
produce  a  complete  picture  of  our  Lord's  life, 
by  supplementing  the  narrative  of  the  one 

Gospels  Written.  ^ 


GG  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

gospel  by  details  supplied  from  another,  and 
especially  by  interpolating  the  discourse  of 
St.  John  between  those  of  the  other  evange- 
lists, so  as  to  trace  out  in  this  way,  step  by 
step,  the  three  years  of  the  Lord's  ministry. 
As  early  as  A.  d.  170,  two  learned  men  under- 
took works  of  this  kind.  One  of  these  was 
Theophilus,  bishop  of . Antioch,  in  Syria;  and 
the  other  Tatian,  a  disciple  of  the  great  divine 
and  martyr  Justin.  These  two  books  are  lost ; 
but  Jerome,  in  the  fourth  centurj^,  gives  us 
some  account  of  that  of  Theo^^hilus,  which  he 
calls  a  combination  of  the  four  gospels  into 
one;  and  Eusebius  and  Theodoret,  in  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  speak  of  that  of 
Tatian  in  the  same  way.  Tatian  had  given 
his  the  name  of  Diafessaron,  that  is,  the  gos- 
pel according  to  four.  These  two  writers 
produced  other  works,  which  are  still  extant, 
and  in  which  there  are  undoubted  quotations 
from  St.  John's  gospel,  not  to  speak  of  the 
other  three.  But  these  Harmonies,  which 
have  not  come  down  to  us,  are  of  much 
higher  value  than  mere  isolated  quotations, 
and  furnish  a  proof  that  at  the  time  when 
they  were  first  attempted  the  four  gospels 


ECCLESIASTICAL    TESTIMONY.  67 

were  regarded  as  a  single  work,  in  which  the 
variety  of  the  narratives,  which  sometimes 
amounts  to  a  real  difference,  was  plainly  per- 
ceptible. Hence  a  desire  arose  to  draw  out 
of  these  differences  a  higher  unity,  and  com- 
bine them  as  one  harmonious  whole.  These 
two  attempts  to  write  a  "Harmony"  w^ere 
made  soon  after  the  middle  of  the  second 
century,  whence  we  may  certainly  conclude 
that  the  gospels  themselves  were  generally 
recognized  and  received  as  such  for  at  least 
a  long  time  previous. 

We  here  pass  by  othej:  testimonies,  in  or- 
der to  say  a  few  words  on  the  letters  of  Igna- 
tius and  Polycarp,  the  disciples  of  the  apos- 
tle, which  carry  us  up  to  an  age  as  early  as 
the  beginning  of  the  second  century.  When 
the  holy  Ignatius,  whom  his  master,  St.  John, 
had  consecrated  bishop  of  Ephesus.  was  led 
as  a  martyr  to  Eome,  between  A.  dTIOT  and 
115,  he  wrote  several  letters  while  on  his 
journey  to  Eome,  of  which  we  have  two  ver- 
sions, one  shorter  and  the  other  longer.  We 
shall  here  refer  only  to  the  shorter,  which  is 
enough  for  our  purpose,  since  its  genuineness 
is   now   generally   admitted.     These   letters 


68  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

contain  several  passages  drawn  more  or  less 
directly  from  St.  Matthew  and  St.  John.  Ig- 
natius thus  writes  in  his  letter  to  the  Ro- 
mans : 

"I  desire  the  bread  of  God,  the  bread  of 
heaven,  the  bread  of  life,  which  is  the  flesh 
of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God.  And  I  de- 
sire the  drink  of  God,  the  blood  of  Jesus 
Christ,  who  is  undying  love  and  eternal  life." 
These  words  recall  the  sixth  chapter  of  St. 
John,  where  it  is  said,  "I  am  the  bread 
which  came  down  from  heaven.  I  am  the 
bread  of  life.  I  am  the  living  bread.  The 
bread  that  I  shall  give  is  my  flesh.  He  that 
eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath 
eternal  life."     Verses  41,  48,  54. 

In  the  same  letter,  Ignatius  writes,  "  What 
would  a  man  be  profited  if  he  should  gain 
the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul?" 
words  liferally  found  in  Matt.  16 :  26. 

Let  us  quote  another  passage  of  his  letter 
to  the  church  of  Smyrna,  where  it  is  said  of 
Jesus  that  he  was  baptized  by  John,  in  order 
that  he  might  fulfil  all  righteousness,  and 
wiiich  exactly  recalls  Matt.  3 :  15. 

The  short  letter  of  Polycarp,  written  a  lit- 


ECCLESIASTICAL    TESTIMONY.  69- 

tie  after  the  death  of  Ignatius,  about  a.d.  115, 
bears  reference,  in  the  same  way,  to  certain 
passages  of  St.  Matthew.  So  when  we  read, 
"We  desire  to  pray  to  God,  who  sees  all,  that 
he  may  not  lead  us  into  temptation,  for  the 
Lord  has  said  that  the  spirit  is  willing,  but 
the  flesh  is  weak."     See  Matt.  6 :  13  and  26 :41. 

Though  we  do  not  wish  to  give  to  these 
references  a  decisive*  value,  and  though  they 
do  not  exclude  all  doubt  as  to  their  applica- 
bility to  our  gospels,  and  more  particularly 
to  that  of  St.  John,  they  nevertheless  un- 
doubtedly bear  traces  of  such  a  reference; 
and  we  have  thus  an  additional  proof  to  of- 
fer, that  our  gospels  were  in  use  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  second  century. 

It  is  certainly  a  fact  well  deserving  of  at- 
tention, that  we  find  in  the  epistle  of  Poly- 
carp  a  certain  trace  of  the  use  of  the  first 
epistle  of  St.  John.  Polycarp  writes  thus: 
"  Whosoever  confesses  not  that  Jesus  Christ 
is  come  in  the  flesh  is  antichrist."  Now  we 
read  these  words  in  the  first  epistle  of  St. 
John  4:3:  "Every  spirit  that  confesses  not 
that  Jesus  Christ  is  come  in  the  flesh,  is  not 
of  God ;  and  this  is  that  spirit  of  antichrist." 


70  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

This  passage  of  the  epistle  of  John,  as 
cited  by  Polycari>^  about  A.  D.  1-15,  is  of  very 
great  importance,  since,  in  fact,  the  ideas  and 
style  in  this  epistle  and  in  the  gospel  of  St. 
John  are  so  like  that  we  are  compelled  to  re- 
fer them  to  the  same  writer.  To  recognize 
the  epistle  we  must  also  recognize  the  gos- 
pel. The  testimony  of  Polycarj),  if  we  bear 
in  mind  the  close  relationship  in  which  he 
stood  to  the  apostle,  is,  as  we  have,  seen 
above,  of  such  weight  that  there  is  no  room 
left  to  contradict  or  attack  the  authenticity 
of  writings  supported  An  this  way.  To  get 
rid  of  this  testimony,  writers  of  the  skeptical 
school  have  made  use  of  the  following  argu- 
ment :  "  It  is  not  absolutely  necessary  to  take 
these  words  of  Polycarp  as  a  quotation  from 
St,  John.  They  may  have  been  sentiments 
A\  liich  were  current  in  the  church,  and  which 
John  may  have  gathered  up,  as  well  as  Poly- 
carp, without  pretending  to  have  first  origi- 
nated them."  A  partisan  of  this  school  has 
had  recourse  to  another  means  to  evade  the 
difficulty :  "  Can  we  not  reverse  the  argu- 
ment, and  say  that  it  is  the  author  of  the  so- 
called    epistles   of   John   who   quotes   Poly- 


ECCLESIASTICAL    TESTIMONY.  71 

carp  ?"  A  man  must  have  some  courage  to 
start  such  an  extraordinary  theory  as  this; 
but  there  are  learned  men  capable  even  of 
this.  And  even  if  this  does  not  succeed,  they 
have  one  expedient  yet,  which  they  do  not 
fail  to  use  as  the  last  resort  of  all.  They  will 
say  that  the  letter  is  not  Polycarp's  at  all. 
It  is  true  that  Irenseus,  his  disciple,  believed 
in  its  genuineness;  but  what  matters  that? 
One  has  always  some  good  reasons  with 
which  to  back  up  an  audacious  assertion,  and 
to  shake  and  overthrow,  if  possible,  a  truth 
w^hich  is  firmly  established.  I  cannot,  how- 
ever, help  saying  to  any  one  who  shudders  at 
these  antichristian  attempts,  that  .they  are  as 
weak  as  they  are  worthless,  and  my  reader 
will  soon  see  that  it  is  so. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  one  of  the  most  worthy 
of  Polycarp's  contemporaries — I  refer  to  Jus- 
tin Martyr,  who  already  had  been  highly  es- 
teemecT  as  a  writer,  before  his.martj^rdom  in 
Eome — about  A.  D.  166 — had  made  his  mem- 
ory precious  to  the  church.  Two  of  his  works 
are  taken  up  with  a  defence  of  Christianity. 
He  presented  these  Apologies  to  the  emperor, 
the  first  in  a.  d.  139,  the  second  in  A.  d.  161. 


72  THE   DATE   OF   THE   GOSPELS. 

One  can  easily  see  from  these  dates,  and  es- 
pecially from  the  earlier  of  the  two,  that  it  is 
important  to  know  whether  Justin  supports 
the  use  and  authority  of  our  gospels.  It  is 
well  established  that  he  made  use  of  the  first 
three,  that  of  Matthew  in  particular;  and  this 
fact  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  attacks  of 
doubt.  This  is  the  very  reason  why  skeptics 
say  all  the  more  obstinately  that  he  does  not 
make  use  of  St.  John.  We,  on  the  contrary, 
without  hesitation,  assert  the  very  opposite. 
In  several  passages  of  Justin,  we  cannot  fail 
to  recognize  an  echo  of  that  special  sentence 
of  St.  John,  "  The  AYord  was  made  flesh." 
The  reply  which  Justin  puts  in  the  mouth  of 
John  the  Baptist,  when  interrogated  by  the 
messenger  of  the  Sanhedrim,  "  I  am  not  the 
Christ,  but  the  voice  of  one  crying,"  is  noth- 
ing but  a  citation  of  a  passage  of  St.  John 
1 :  20-23.  The  apostle  cites  the  words  of 
Zechariah — cluip.  12:10 — in  such  a  way  as 
they  are  found  nowhere  else ;  and  as  Justin 
uses  the  quotation  in  the  same  way,  it  is  clear 
that  he  has  borrowed  them  from  St.  John. 

We  also  read  in  Justin's  first  Apology,  A.  D. 
139,  "Christ  has  said,  Except  ye  are  boru 


ECCLESIASTICAL   TESTIMONY.  73 

again,  ye  cannot  enter  into  the  kingxlom  of 
God;  but  that  it  is  impossible  that  those 
who  are  once  born  should  enter  a  second 
time  into  their  mother's  womb  and  be  born  is 
clear  to  every  one."  There  has  been  much 
dispute  as  to  the  meaning  of  this  passage. 
For  our  part,  we  take  the  view  that  Justin 
was  referring  to  John  3  and  to  our  Lord's 
discourse  with  Nicodemus :  "  Yerily,  verily,  I 
say  unto  thee,  Except  a  man  be  born  again, 
he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God."  That 
this  passage  of  St.  John  occurred  to  Justin's 
mind  is,  in  my  judgment,  indubitable  on  this 
account,  that  he  adds  in  the  same  loose  way 
in  which  he  is  in  the  habit  of  quoting  the  Old 
Testament,  certain  other  v/ords  of  our  Lord, 
which,  in  the  text  of  St.  John,  are  as  follows : 
"How  can  a  man  be  born  when  he  is  old? 
can  he  enter  the  second  time  into  his  mother's 
womb,  and  be  born?"  If  we  are  justified  in 
assuming  the  use  of  the  gospel  of  St.  John  by 
Justin,  then  the  supposition  that  the  gospel 
was  only  written  about  A.  D.  150,  and  is  con- 
sequently unauthentic,  is  proved  to  be  an 
unwarranted  assumption. 

We  can  also  show,  in  another  way,  that 


74  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

Justin  proves  that  the  authenticity  of  this 
gospel  was  well  established  in  his  day.  We 
will  only  refer  to  one.  He  tells  us  in  the 
same  apology,  written  a.  d.  139,  that  the  me- 
moirs of  the  apostles,  called  evangelists,  were 
read  after  the  prophets  every  Lord's  day  in 
the  assemblies  of  the  Christians.  Here  we, 
have  to  remark  that  the  gospels  are  placed 
side  by  side  with  the  prophets.  This  un- 
doubtedl}^  places  the  gospels  in  the  ranks  of 
canonical  books,  the  same  as  the  prophets 
were  regarded  in  the  Jewish  synagogue. 
But  who  in  the  world  would  ever  think  that 
at  the  time  of  Justin  the  church  used  any 
other  gospels  than  those  which  we  now  know 
of,  and  which,  within  a  few  years  of  the  time, 
were  heard  of  throughout  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world?  Indeed,  it  contradicts  all  that 
we  know  of  the  rise  and  origin  of  the  canon 
to  suppose  that  at  first,  and  up  to  Justin 
Martyr's  time,  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke, 
only,  had  been  accepted  as  canonical,  and 
that  John's  gospel  was  brought  in  after- 
wards. 


HERETICAL   AND    PAGAN    TESTIMONY.    75 


CHAPTEK   II. 

THE  TESTIMONY  OF  HEKETICS  AND 
HEATHEN  DUEING  THE  SECOND  CEN- 
TURY. 

Our  observations  so  far  have  almost  en- 
tirely been  confined  to  tlie  writings  of  those 
men  whom  the  church  of  the  second  century 
regarded  as  pillars  of  the  faith.  During  the 
same  period,  however,  there  sprang  up  a  lit- 
erature of  heretical  and  erroneous  teachers, 
which,  like  grafts  of  a  wild  tree,  threw  up  a 
rank  luxuriance  of  strange  doctrine.  We 
can  produce  satisfactory  testimony,  even  from 
writings  of  this  kind,  that  about  the  middle, 
and  before  the  middle,  of  the  second  century, 
our  gospels  were  held  in  the  highest  esteem 
by  the  church.  This  brandi  of  our  inquiry  is 
as  interesting  on  account  of  the  insight  it 
gives  us  into  the  opinions  of  these  erroneous 
teachers  as  it  is  important  on  account  of  the 
information  it  gives  us  on  the  age  and  author- 
ity of  our  gospels.  In  appealing  to  these 
false  teachers  as  testimony  to  the  truth  of  the 


7G  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

gospels,  we  follow  no  less  a  precedent  than 
Ir  en  sens,  the  well-known  bishop  of  Lyons,  to 
whom  we  have  already  referred.  Irenaeus 
makes  the  observation,  "  So  well  established 
are  our  gospels,  that  even  teachers  of  error 
themselves  bear  testimony  to  them ;  even 
they  rest  their  objections  on  the  foundation 
of  the  gospels."     Adv.  Haer.  iii.,  11,  7. 

This  is  the  judgment  which  the  last  half  of 
the  second  century  passes  on  the  first  half ; 
and  this  first  half  of  the  second  century  is  the 
very  time  from  which  the  opponents  of  the 
gospel  narrative  draw  their  principal  objec- 
tions. Now  surely  a  man  like  Irena3us,  who 
lived  only  twenty  years  or  so  later  than  this 
very  time, .must  have  known  this  fact  belter 
than  certain  professors  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. The  more  respect  then,  that  we  pay  to 
the  real  culture  and  progress  of  our  age,  the 
less  can  we  esteem  those  learned  men  who 
only  use  their  knowledge  and  acuteness  to 
make  away  with  history.  What  Irena^us 
affirms  is  fully  borne  out  by  facts.  AYe  may 
therefore,  with  all  confidence,  intrust  our- 
selves to  his  guidance.  As  a  fact,  the  replies 
of  the  early  church  fathers  to  these  heretics, 


HERETICAL   AND   PAGAN   TESTIMONY.    77 

to  wliicli  we  owe  all  that  we  know  about  tliem, 
furnish  positive  proof  that  these  false  teach- 
ers admitted  our  gospels  to  be,  as  the  church 
already  declared  them  to  be,  canonical;  and 
Irenseus,  the  bishop  of  Lyons,  is  one  of  the 
chief  authorities  on  this  subject.  Next  to 
him  we  should  place  a  work,  discovered  about 
twenty  years  ago,  of  a  disciple  of  Irenseus,  by 
name  Hippolitus,  a  man  who  lived  sufficiently 
near  the  time  of  these  erroneous  teachers  to 
be,  like  his  master,  a  competent  testimony  on 
such  a  subject. 

One  of  the  most  intelligent  and  able  of 
these  early  heretics  w^as  Yalentinus,  who 
came  from  Egypt  to  Eome  some  time  in  the 
early  part  of  the  second  century,  and  lived 
there  about  twenty  years.  He  undertook  to 
write  a  complete  history  of  all  the  celestial 
evolutions  which,  in  the  mysterious  region  of 
those  celestial  forces  and  heavenly  intelligen- 
ces— which  he  called  the  pleroma — prepared 
the  way  for  the  coming  of  the  only-begotten 
Son,  and  pretended  to  determine  in  this  way 
the  nature  and  power  of  that  only -begotten 
Son.  In  this  extravagant  attempt,  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  borrow  a  number  of  expres- 


78  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

sions  and  ideas,  such  as  tlie  Word,  the  Only- 
begotten,  Life,  Light,  Fulness,  Truth,  Grace, 
the  Redeemer,  the  Comforter,  from  the  gos- 
pel of  St.  John,  and  to  use  them  for  his  own 
purposes.  There  is  thus  such  an  undeniable 
connection  between  the  gospel  of  St.  John 
and  this  Yalentinian  scheme  of  doctrine,  that 
one  of  two  explanations  only  are  possible: 
Either  Yalentinus  has  borrowed  from  St. 
John,  or  St.  John  from  Yalentinus.  After 
what  we  have  said  already,  the  latter  suppo- 
sition must  appear  utterly  incredible,  and  a 
nearer  consideration  of  the  subject  only  con- 
firms this.  Now  when  a  skeptical  school  of 
our  age  resorts  to  such  a  hypothesis  as  this, 
it  proclaims  its  own  downfall.  Iren£eus,  in 
fact,  expressly  declares  that  the  Yalentinians 
made  use  of  St.  John's  gospel ;  and  he  shows 
us  in  detail  how  they  drew  from  the  first 
chapter  some  of  their  principal  dogmas. 

Hijipolytus  confirms  this  assertion  of  Ire- 
nseus.  He  quotes  several  of  the  sayings  of 
our  Lord  as  recorded  by  St.  John,  which 
were  adppted  by  Yalentinus.  One  of  the 
mo^t  distinct  references  is  that  to  John  10:8; 
of    which    Hippolytus    writes :    "  Since    the 


HERETICAL   AND    PAGAN    TESTIMONY.  79 

prophets  and  the  law,  according  jbp  Valen- 
tinus'  doctrine,  were  marked  b3al*an  infe- 
rior and  less  intelligent  spirit."  Yalentinus 
quotes,  in  proof  of  this  assertion,  the  words 
of  the  Redeemer,  "  All  tlia*t  ever  came  before 
me  were  thieves  and  robbers."  Hippolytus, 
Philosophoumenon,  vi.  35.  It  is  easy  to 
prove  that  Yalentinns  treated  the  other  gos- 
pels in  the  same  way  as  he  did  that  of  St. 
John.  According  to  Irenseus,  he  supposed 
that  th«  inferior  spirit,  whom  he  called  tliQ 
Demiurge,  or  maker  of  the  world,  was^  typi- 
fied in  the  centurion  of  Capernaum,  Matt. 
8:9;  Luke  7:8.  In  the  daughter  of  Jairus, 
dead  and  raised  to  life,  he  fancied  a  type  of 
his  lower  wisdom,  Ackamoth,  the  mother  of 
the  Demiurge ;  and  in  the  history  of  the 
woman  who,  for  twelve  years,  had  the  issue 
of  blood,  and  who  was  healed  by  the  Lord, 
Matt.  9 :  20,  he  saw  a  figure  of  the  suffering 
and  deliverance  of  his  twelfth  OEon. 

"What  bearing,  then,  has  all  this  on  our  in- 
quiry? Already,  before  the  middle  of  the 
second  century,  we  see  that  our  gospels,  and 
especially  that  of  St.  John,  were  held  in  such 
esteem  that  even  a  fantastic  philosopher  at- 


80  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

tempted  to  find  support  in-  the  simple  words 
of  the  gospels  for  his  fanciful  scheme  of  celes- 
tial powers,  primitive  intelligences,  OEons, 
and  so  forth. 

Besides  Yalentinus,  we  possess  a  learned 
letter  written  by  a  disciple  of  his,  by  name 
Ptolemy.  It  contains,  in  addition  to  several 
quotations  from  St.  Matthew,  a  passage 
taken  from  the  first  chapter  of  St.  John,  in 
these  "words :  "  The  apostle  says  that  all  things 
were  made  by  it,  and  that  without  it  was  not 
any  thing  made  that  was  made." 

Another  distinguished  follower  and  com- 
panion of  Yalentinus,  by  name  Heracleon, 
wrote  an  entire  commentary  on  the  gospel  of 
St.  John,  several  fragments  of  which  still  re- 
main. In  it  he  endeavors  to  twist  the  words 
of  the  gospel  into  agreement  with  the  fancies 
of  Yalentinus.  What  must  have  been  the 
esteem,  then,  in  which  this  gospel  was  held 
in  the  second  century,  when  a  leading  follow- 
er of  such  a  fanciful  and  erroneous  theorist 
as  Yalentinus  should  feel  himself  driven  to 
draw  up  a  commentary  on  this  gospel,  in  or- 
der to  make  it  support  his  heresy. 

Yalentinus  and  his  a^jhool   were   not   the 


HERETICAL   AND   PAGAN  TESTIMONY.    81 

only  writers  who  sought,  though  hostile  to 
the  church,  to  have  the  gospels  on  their  side 
instead  of  against  them.  There  were  other 
sects,  such  as  the  Naasseiies,  so  called  from 
their  possessing  the  spirit  of  the  serpent 
(Nachash)  that  temjoted  our  first  parents; 
and  the  Peraticse,  a  sect  of  enthusiasts,  so 
called  from  their  pretending  to  see  into  the 
heavenly  future,  who  wove  into  their  teach- 
ings many  passages  of  St.  John,  as  we  learn 
from  Hippolytus. 

Already  under  Adrian,  between  A.  d.  117 
and  138,  Basilides  had  written  a  long  w^ork 
to  explain  the  gospels,  in  the  same  fantastic 
spirit  as  Yalentinus.  We  can  only  infer  this 
from  a  few  fragments  which  remain  to  us. 
But  we  can  say,  with  some  degree  of  certain- 
ty, that  he  used  the  gospel  of  St.  John ;  for 
Hippolytus  expressly  says  that  he  used  the 
expressions,  "  That  was  the  true  light  which 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the 
world,"  John  1:9;  and  "  Mine  hour  is  not 
yet  come,"  John.  2  :4. 

Let  us  not  pass  over  another  heretic  of  the 
early  part  of  the  second  century,  whose  name 
has  been  used  by  those  who  take  the  con- 

Gospels  Wn'tten.  Q 


82  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

trary  view.  We  refer  to  Marcion,  in  reply 
to  whom  Tertullian  wrote  the  work  we  have 
above  referred  to.  He  was  born  at  Sinope, 
on  the  shores  of  the  Black  sea;  but  it  was 
at  Borne  that  he  afterwards  w^rote  those 
works  which  brought  his  name  into  notice. 
It  was  his  special  effort  to  break  the  link 
which  connects  Christianity  with  Judaism,  and 
for  this  reason  he  tried  to  get  rid  of  every 
thing  in  the  apostles'  teaching  which  seemed 
to  countenance  Judaism.  As  we  learn  from 
church  history  that  Marcion  composed  a 
canon  of  Scripture  adapted  to  his  own  pecu- 
liar views,  and  that  this  collection  contained 
only  the  gospel  of  St.  Luke,  with  ten  of  the 
apostle  Paul's  ej)istles,  and  that  he  even  ac- 
commodated the  text  of  these  to  fit  in  with 
his  notions,  certain  learned  men  have  thought 
that  this  was  the  first  collection  of  Holy 
Scripture  known  to  the  church — that  his  gos- 
pel was  the  original  of  that  which  now  passes 
for  the  gospel  of  St.  Luke,  and  that  he  was 
not  acquainted  with  the  gospel  of  St.  John. 
We  hold  that  all  these  three  assertions  are 
quite  erroneous;  as  regards  the  second  of 
the  three,  it  is  admitted  on  all  sides  to  be  so. 


HERETICAL   AND   PAGAN  TESTIMONY.   83 

As  to  tlie  tliircl  of  tliese  assumptions,  of 
wliich  so  much  lias  been  made,  that  Marcion 
was  unacquainted  with  St.  John's  gospel,  the 
following  testimony  of  Tertullian  is  decisive 
against  it.  This  writer  tells  us  of  an  earlier 
work  of  Marcion's,  in  which  he  made  use  of 
all  the  four  gospels,  and  that  to  suit  his  own 
purposes  he  afterwards  rejected  all  but  that 
of  St.  Luke.  We  have  not  the  least  right  to 
doubt  this  statement,  since  the  whole  of  Ter- 
tullian's  reply  to  Marcion  rests  on  this  point 
as  on  an  undisputed  fact. 

These  heretics,  then,  of  the  early  church, 
have  rendered  considerable  service  by  their 
testimony  to  the  early  reception  of  the  gos- 
pels. We  now  pass  them  by  to  notice  those 
open  enemies  of  Christianity,  to  whom  the 
preaching  of  the  cross  was  nothing  but  a 
stumbling-block  and  foolishness.  About  the 
middle  of  the  second  century  there  was  such 
a  one  in  Celsus,  who  wrote  a  book  full  of 
ridicule  and  reproach  against  Christianity. 
The  book  itself  has  long  since  been  lost — a 
fate  which  it  well  deserved ;  and  yet,  in  spite 
of  all  its  bitterness  and  scorn,  it  did  no  real 
damage  to  the  young  Christian  church  still 


84  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

suffering  under  persecution — a  fact  which  is 
encouraging  to  us,  who  have  to  meet  similar 
attacks  in  our  day.     It  is  well  for  us,  how- 
ever, that  Origen  has  preserved  several  ex- 
tracts from  this  book  of  Celsus.     From  these 
extracts  we  gather  that  Celsus,  in  attacking 
Christianity,  made  use  of  the  gospels,  and  as 
"  the  writings  of  the  disciples  of  Jesus,"  em- 
ployed them  to  show  what  was  believed  by 
Christians.     He  notices  in  this  way  the  story 
of  the  wise  men  coming  from  the  East,  the 
flight  of  the  child  Jesus  into  Egypt,  the  ap- 
pearing of  the  dove  at  our  Lord's  baptism, 
his  birth  from  a  virgin,  his  agony  in  the  gar- 
den, his  thirst  on  the  cross,  etc.     While  he 
gathers  these  facts  from  the  first  three  gos- 
pels, he  takes  even  more  details  from  the  gos- 
pel of  St.  John ;  as,  for  example,  that  Jesus 
was  asked  by  the  Jews  in  the  temple  to  do 
some  miracle,  that  Jesus  was  known  as  the 
Word  of  God,  that  at  the  crucifixion  blood 
flowed  from  his  side.     Of  the  accounts  of  the 
resurrection  Jie  notices  that  in  one  gospel 
there  are  two  angels,  and  in  another  gospel 
only  one  is  spoken  of  as  present  at  the  grave; 
to  which  Origen  said  in  reply,  that  the  one 


HERETICAL  AND  PAGAN  TESTIMONY.  85 

account  is  based  on  tlie  gospels  of  St.  Luke 
and  St.  John,  the  other  on  that  of  St.  Mat- 
thew and  St.  Mark.  We  may,  therefore,  con- 
clude that  this  heathen  opponent  of  the  gos- 
pel in  the  second  century  knew  of  the  four 
gospels  which  we  possess,  and  considered 
them,  as  we  do,  to  be  genuine  apostolical 
writings. 


88  THE   DATE   OF    THE   GOSPELS. 


CHAPTEK  III. 

APOCKYPHAL  LITEKATUKE. 

The  same  service  wliicli  tlie  early  heretics 
and  heathen  opponents  of  Christianity  ren> 
der  to  our  cause,  we  may  get  from  consult- 
ing the  so-called  Apocrypha  of  the  New 
Testament.  My  reader  will  ask,  What  is 
this  Apocryphal  literature?  Now  I  can  give 
some  information  on  this  subject,  as  I  have 
paid  much  attention  to  it,  and  have  discov- 
ered several  originals  in  old  libraries,  and 
edited  them  for  the  first  time.  Sixteen  years 
ago  I  wrote  an  essay,  which  obtained  a  prize 
in  Holland,  on  the  origin  and  worth  of  the 
apocryphal  gospels.  The  apocryphal  books 
are  writings  composed  with  a  view  of  being 
taken  up  into  the  canon,  and  put  on  a  level 
with  the  inspired  books,  but  which  were  de- 
liberately rejected  by  the  church.  They  bear 
on  their  front  the  names  of  apostles,  or  other 
eminent  men;  but  have  no  right  to  do  so. 
These  names  were  used  by  obscure  writers 


APOCEYPHAL  LITEEATURE.      87 

to  palm  off  tlieir  productions.  But  for  what 
purpose  were  these  ■  apocryphal  books  writ- 
ten ?  Partly  to  embellish  and  add  to,  in 
some  fanciful  way  of  their  own,  Scripture 
narratives;  partly  to  invent  others  about  the 
Saviour,  Mary,  Joseph,  and  the  apostles ;  and 
partly  to  support  false  doctrines,  for  which 
there  was  no  support  in  Scripture.  As  these 
objects  were  decidedly  pernicious,  the  church 
was  fully  justified  in  rejecting  these  writings. 
They  nevertheless  contain  much  that  is 
interesting  and  curious,  and  in  early  times, 
when  the  church  was  not  so  critical  in  dis- 
tinguishing the  true  from  the  false,'  they  were 
given  a  place  which  they  did  not  deserve. 
We  have  already  explained  in  what  sense  we 
shall  use  them:  they  will  go  to  strengthen  • 
our  proof  of  the  early  recej)tion  of  the  ca- 
nonical gospels.  Every  thing  will  therefore 
depend  upon  the  age  of  these  apocryphal 
writings,  and  here  we  confine  ourselves  to 
two  only,  the  Gospel  of  St.  James,  and  the 
so-called  Acts  of  Pilate.  We  think  we  shall 
be  able  to  prove  that  both  of  these  date  from 
the  early  part  of  the  second  century.  To  be- 
gin with  the  Gospel  of  James. 


88  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

In  Justin  Martyr's  Apology,  "written  A.  D. 
139,  we  find  many  details  of  the  birth  of  oiu- 
Lord,  such  as  are  only  found  in  this  so-called 
Gospel   of  James.     Justin  relates  that   the 
birth  of  Christ  was  in  a  grotto  near  Bethle- 
hem; so  we  read  in  the  apocryphal  gospel. 
In  the  account  of  the  annunciation  to  the 
Virgin  Mary,  Justin  concludes  with  the  words, 
"  And  thou  shalt  call  his  name  Jesus ;"  and 
he  adds,  immediately  after,  "  for  he  shall  save 
his  people  from  their  sins."    The  order  is  the 
same   in   St.  James'  gospel.      According  to 
St.  Matthew,  these  words   were    spoken   to 
Joseph;  while  they  are  wholly  wanting  in 
St.  Luke's  gospel.      We  pass  by  other  in- 
stances.    But  an  objection  may  be  raised. 
It  may  be  said  that  Justin  obtained  his  ac- 
count from  some  other  document  since  lost. 
For  my  part,  I  cannot  agree  with  this  objec- 
tion.    I  find  no  references  to  any  lost  gos- 
pels ;  the  attempts  to  discover  them  on  the 
part  of  the  skeptical  school  have  not  been 
successful ;  and  as  the  materials  of  Justin's 
information  lie  before  us  in  the  gospel  of  St. 
James,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  ascribing  it  to 
that   source.     Not   only  does   Origen   men- 


APOCRYPHAL  LITERATURE.      89 

tion  this  gospel  of  James  as  ever^^wliere 
known  about  the  end  of  the  second,  centurj^, 
but  we  have  also  about  fifty  manuscripts  of 
this  gospel  of  the  date  of  the-  ninth  century, 
and  also  a  Syriac  of  the  sixth  century.  To 
get  rid  of  the  inference  that  Justin  made  use 
of  this  gospel,  we  must  lose  ourselves  in  wild 
conjecture. 

Now  the  whole  of  the  writing  called  after 
St.  James  is  so  closely  related  to  our  gospels, 
that  they  must  have  been  extensively  known 
and  used  before  the  former  was  concocted. 
Matthew  and  Luke  had  declared  that  Mary 
was  a  virgin-mother:  now  there  were  sects 
who  taught  that  there  was  also  a  son  natu- 
rally born  to  Joseph  and  Mary:  that  the 
brethren  of  Jesus  are  referred  to  in  the  gos- 
pels seems  to  imply  this.  There  were  learned 
Jews  who  denied  the  meaning  of  the  proph- 
et's reference  to  the  virgin,  Matt.  1 :  23 ;  and 
heathen  and  Jews  also  mocked  at  the  doc- 
trine of  a  son  born  to  a  virgin.  These  objec- 
tions were  raised  as  early  as  the  former  part 
of  the  second  century,  and  the  gospel  of  James 
was  written  in  reply  to  these  objections.  It 
set  forth  by  proving  that  from  her  birth  Mary 


90  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

had  been  liiglilj  favored ;  that  from  her  birth 
she  was  raarked  out  as  the  vh'gin;  and  that 
her  relationship  to  Joseph  always  stood  high- 
er than  that  of  a  mere  matrimonial  union. 
Now  if  this  writing  is  assigned  to  the  early- 
part  of  the  second  century,  the  gospels  of  St. 
Mattliew  and  St.  Mark,  on  which  it  is  ground- 
ed, could  not  have  been  written  later  than 
the  end  of  the  first  century. 

It  is  the  same  with  the  Acts  of  Pilate,  with 
this  di£ference  onlj,  that  it  rests  on  the  gos- 
pel of  St.  John  as  well  as  on  the  other  evan- 
gelists. Justin  is  our  earliest  authority"  for 
the  writing  which  professes  to  have  appeared 
under  Pilate,  and  which  adduces  fresh  and 
convincing  testimony  for  the  godhead  of 
Christ  from  events  before,  during,  and  after 
his  crucifixion.  That  it  was  a  pious  fi'aud  of 
some  Christian,  neither  Justin,  Tertullian, 
nor  any  other  ever  doubted.  On  the  con- 
trary, Justin  twice  refers  to  it.  First,  he  re- 
fers to  it  in  connection  with  the  prophecies 
of  the  crucifixion,  Isa.  65  :  2;  58  :  2;  Psa. 
22:16-18;  adding,  "that  this  really  took 
place,  you  can  see  from  the  Acts  composed 
under  Pontius  Pilate ;"   and,  in  the  second 


APOCEYPHAL  LITERATURE.      91 

place,  when  lie  adduces  the  miraculous  cures 
wrought  by  Christ,  and  predicted  by  Isaiah, 
Isa.  35  : 4-6,  he  adds,  "  That  Jesus  did  these 
things,  you  may  see  in  the  Acts  of  Pontius 
Pilate."  The  testimony  of  Tertullian  is  even 
more  express,  Apology  21,  when  he  says, 
*'The  doctors  of  the  law  delivered  Jesus 
through  envy  to  Pilate ;  that  Pilate,  yielding 
to  the  clamor  of  his  accusers,  gave  him  up  to 
be  crucified;  that  Jesus,  in  yielding  up  his 
breath  on  the  cross,  uttered  a  great  cry,  and 
at  the  instant,  at  midday,  the  sun  was  dark- 
ened; that  a  guard  of  soldiers  was  set  at  the 
tomb,  to  keep  the  disciplfes  from  taking  away 
the  body,  for  he  had  foretold  his  resurrec- 
tion; that  on  the  third  day  the  earth  sud- 
denly shook,  and  that  the  stone  before  the 
sepulchre  was  rolled  away,  and  that  they 
found  only  the  grave-clothes  in  the  tomb; 
that  the  chief  men  in  the  nation  spread  the 
report  that  his  disciples  had  taken  away  the 
body,  but  that  Jesus  spent  forty  days  still  in 
Galilee,  instructing  his  apostles,  and  that 
after  giving  them  the  command  to  preach  the 
gospel,  he  was  taken  up  to  heaven  in  a  cloud." 
Tertullian  closes  this  account  with  the  words, 


92  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

"  Pilate,  driven  by  liis  conscience  to  become 
a  Christian,  reported  these  things  to  Tibe- 
rius, who  was  then  emperor." 

These  are  the  testimonies  of  Justin  and 
TertuUian  as  to  the  Acts  of  Pilate.  We  have 
to  this  day  several  ancient  Greek  and  Latin 
manuscripts  of  a  work  which  corresponds 
with  these  citations,  and  which  bears  the 
same  name  as  that  referred  to  by  Justin.  Is 
it  then  the  same  Avhich  Justin  and  TertuUian 
had  read  ? 

This  view  of  the  question  has  been  opposed 
in  several  ways.  Some  have  maintained  that 
these  testimonies  only  existed  in  imagination, 
but  that  the  writing  itself,  suggested  by  these 
very  quotations,  afterwards  appeared.  But 
this  is  a  baseless  supposition.  Others  think 
that  the  original  has  been  lost,  and  that  these 
are  only  copies  of  it.  Is  there  any  ground 
for  supposing  this  ?  No.  It  is  true  that  the 
original  text  has  been  altered  in  many  places ; 
and  in  the  middle  ages  the  Latins  mixed  up 
the  title  of  the  Acts  of  Pilate  with  that  of  the 
Acts  of  Nicodemus,  and  added  a  preface^to  it 
in  this  altered  form ;  and  lastly,  side  by  side 
with  the  ancient  Greek  text,  we  have  a  recast 


APOCRYPHAL  LITERATUEE.      93 

of  it  comparatively  modern.  But,  notwith- 
standing all  tliis,  there  are  decisive  reasons 
for  maintaining  that  the  Acts  of  Pilate  now 
extant  contain  substantially  that  which  Jus- 
tin and  TertulHan  had  before  them.  Our 
owai  researches  in  the  great  libraries  of  Eu- 
rope have  led  us  to  discover  important  docu- 
ments to  prove  this.  I  would  mention  only 
an  Egyptian  manuscript;  or  papyrus,  and  a 
Latin  manuscript,  both  of  the  fifth  century. 
This  last,  though  rubbed  over  about  a  thou- 
sand years  ago,  and  written  over  with  a  new 
\vriting,  is  still  legible  by  practised  eyes. 
(Manuscripts  of  this  kind  are  called  pahmp- 
sests.)  These  two  originals,  one  Egyptian, 
the  other  Latin,  confirm  the  high  antiquity  of 
our  Greek  text,  on  w^hich  they  were  founded ; 
for  if  there  were  versions  of  these  Acts  as 
early  as  the  fifth  century,  the  original  itself 
must  certainly  be  older. 

Let  us  look  at  the  matter  a  little  more 
closely.  This  ancient  w^ork  was  very  highly 
prized  by  the  Christians.  Justin  and  Ter- 
tullian  are  proofs'  of  this,  and  Justin  even 
appeals  to  it,  in  writing  to  an  emperor,  as  to 
a  decisive  testimony.     It  still  maintained  its 


94:  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

place  of  authority,  as  Eusebius  and  Epiplia- 
nius  attest.  The  first  tells  us  that  at  the 
beginning  of  the  fourth  centilry  the  emperor 
Maximin,  who  was  hostile  to  Christianity, 
caused  some  pretended  Acts  of  Pilate  to  be 
pubHshed,  full  of  false  charges  and  calum- 
nies, and  circulated  it  through  the  schools 
with  the  evident  intention  of  throwing  into 
the  shade  and  discrediting  the  Acts  which 
the  Christians  prized  so  highly.  I  ask  then 
is  it  the  least  credible  that  this  ancient  Apoc- 
ryphal book,  so  freely  used  up  to  this  time, 
could  have  been  so  completely  recast  towards 
the  end  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  century,  as  that 
the  original  disapj)eared,  and  a  spurious  ver- 
sion took  its  place  ?  Such  a  supposition  vio- 
lates all  probability,  and  also  carries  a  con- 
tradiction on  the  face  of  it  in  that  it  implies 
that  a  work  so  mutilated  could  retain  at  the 
same  time  a  certain  real  resemblance  to  the 
gospels.  Such  a  theory  can  only  mislead 
those  who  are  entirely  ignorant  of  the  sub- 
ject. We  cannot  class  ourselves  among  such; 
we  rather  rely  with  confidence  on  our  own 
conscientious  examination  of  the  documents, 
and  our  conclusion  is  as  follows :  Our  Acts  of 


APOCRYPHAL  LITERATURE.      05 

Pilate  not  only  presuppose  acquaintance  with 
the  first  three  gospels,  but  also  and  especially 
with  St.  John's ;  for  if  the  details  of  the  cru- 
cifixion and  resurrection  rest  on  the  former, 
those  of  the  trial  of  Christ  refer  to  the  latter. 
It  follows  from  all  this  that  as  the  so-called 
Acts  of  Pilate  must  have  been  compiled  about 
the  beginning  of  the  second  century,  as  Jus- 
tin, A.  D.  139,  refers  to  them,  the  original  gos- 
pels on  which  they  are  based,  including  that 
of  St.  John,  must  have  been  written  in  the 
first  century. 

This  conclusion  is  so  satisfactory  and  de- 
cisive, that  we  do  not  seek  to  add  any  thing 
to  it  from  any  further  uses  of  the  Apocryphal 
books  of  the  New  Testament. 


9G  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

TESTIMONY  OF   APOSTOLIC  FATHERS. 
BARNABAS— P  API  AS. 

The  testimony  of  tlie  Acts  of  Pilate  and 
tlie  Book  of  James  falls  tlms  within  the  early 
part  of  the  second  century.  We  have  ad- 
vanced step  by  step  from  the  latter  to  the 
former  part  of  this  century.  Another  re- 
markable writing  of  this  age  here  meets  us 
at  this  time — a  writing  which  was  put  together 
by  several  remarkable  men  between  the  end 
of  the  second  and  the  beginning  of  the  fourth 
century.  That  it  bears  most  decisively  on 
the  question  of  the  authorship  of  the  gospels 
we  can  now  most  confidently  maintain  since 
the  discovery  of  the  Sinaitic  Bible.  We  here 
speak  of  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas. 

This  epistle,  in  its  style  and  matter,  resem- 
bles that  to  the  Hebrews.  It  is  addressed  to 
those  Christians  who,  coming  out  of  Judaism, 
desired  to  retain,  under  the  New  Testament, 
certain  peculiarities  of  the  Old ;  in  the  same 


APOSTOLIC   FATHERS.  97 

way  that  the  Juclaizing  teachers  among  the 
Galatians  had  acted.  In  opposition  to  such 
tendencies,  the  epistle  asserts  the  truth  that 
the  new  covenant  which  Christ  estabHshed 
had  aboKshed  the  old,  and  that  the  old  was 
never  more  than  an  imperfect  type  and  shad- 
ow of  the  new. 

During  the  last  two  centuries,  this  epistle 
has  been  well  known ;  but,  unfortunately,  the 
first  four  chapters  were  wanting  in  the  copies 
of  all  the  Greek  manuscripts  found  in  the 
libraries  of  Europe.  It  was  only  in  a  Latin 
version,  and  that  of  a  very  corrupt  text,  that 
the  entire  epistle  was  to  be  read.  In  this 
Latin  version  there  was  a  passage,  in  the 
fourth  chapter,  which  had  excited  peculiar 
attention :  "  Let  us  take  care  that  we  be  not 
of  those  of  whom  it  is  written  that  many 
were  called,  but  few  chosen."  This  expres- 
sion, "as  it  is  written,"  every  reader  of  the 
New  Testament  is  familiar  with  already.  I 
would  ask  you  to  read  Matt.  4:1-11,  where 
the  temptation  of  our  Lord  is  recorded.  The 
weapon  which  our  Lord  used  against  the 
tempter  is  contained  the  words,  "  it  is  writ- 
ten;" and  even  the  tempter  uses  this  weapon 

Gospels  Written.  7 


98  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

in  return,  plying  liis  temptation  with  tlie 
■words,  "  it  is  written."  It  is  the  formula  by 
which  expressions  out  of  Scripture  are  distin- 
guished from  all  others,  and  marked  out  as 
the  word  of  God  written.  The  apostles,  like 
the  Saviour,  often  used  the  expression  when 
introducing  a  quotation  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. It  was  natural,  therefore,  to  apply 
this  form  of  expression  to  the  apostles'  wri- 
tings as  soon  as  they  had  been  placed  in  the 
canon  with  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament. 
When  we  find,  therefore,  in  ancient  ecclesias- 
tical writings,  quotations  from  the  gospels 
introduced  with  this  formula,  "It  is  writ- 
ten," we  must  infer  that,  at  the  time  when 
the  expression  was  used,  the  gospels  were 
certainly  treated  as  of  equal  authority  with 
the  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  As  soon  as 
they  were  thus  placed  side  by  side,  there  was 
a  canon  of  the  New  Testament  as  well  as  of 
the  Old ;  for  the  words  which  are  referred  to 
under  the  formula  in  Barnabas'  epistle  are 
found,  as  is  well  known,  in  Matt.  22 :  14,  and 
also,  20 :  16.  If  this  argument  is  of  any  weight, 
it  follows  that,  at  the  time  when  the  Epistle 
of  Barnabas  was  written,  the  gospel  of  St. 


APOSTOLIC   FATHERS.  99 

Matthew  was  treated  as  part  of  lioly  Scrip- 
ture. 

But  as  the  Ej)istle  of  Barnabas  is  undoubt- 
edly of  high  antiquity,  the  fact  that  the  for- 
mula, "It  is  written,"  is  used,  has  been  dis- 
puted by  many  learned  men ;  and  what  gave 
some  countenance  to  the  doubt  is  this,  that 
the  first  five  chapters  were  extant  only  in  the 
Latin  version.  They  were  able  to  say  that 
this  important  expression  was  introduced  by 
the  Latin  translator.  A  learned  theologian, 
Dr.  Credner,  literally  wrote,  in  the  year  1832, 
as  follows :  "  This  disputed  expression  does 
not  exist  for  us  in  the  original  Greek.  It 
would  have  been  easy  for  the  translator  to 
introduce  the  usual  formula ;  and  for  internal 
reasons,  we  shall  hold  the  genuineness  of  the 
phrase  to  be  unproved  till  the  contrary  is 
proved."  The  decision,  then,  of  the  genu- 
ineness or  not  of  the  expression,  depended 
upon  the  discovery  of  the  original  Greek  text. 
And  not  long  after  these  words  of  Credner 
were  written,  the  original  Greek  text  was 
discovered.  While  men  were  disputing  in 
learned  Germany  as  to  whether  the  Latin 
version  was  to  be  relied  on  in  this  question 


100  THE   DATE   OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

or  not,  the  original  Greek  text,  which  was  to 
decide  the  question,  lay  hid  in  a  Greek  con- 
vent in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,  among  a  heap 
of  old  parchments.  While  so  much  has  been 
lost,  in  the  course  of  centuries,  by  the  tooth 
of  time  and  the  carelessness  of  ignorant 
monks,  an  invisible  eye  had  watched  over 
this  treasure ;  and  when  it  was  on  the  point 
of  perishing  in  the  fire,  the  Lord  had  decreed 
its  deliverance.  In  the  Sinaitic  Bible,  the 
entire  of  this  Epistle  of  Barnabas  has  been 
found  in  the  original  Greek.  And  how  does 
this  original  text  decide  this  important  ques- 
tion? It  decides  that  this  expression,  "It 
is  written,"  was  first  prefixed  to  the  quota- 
tion from  St.  Matthew,  not  by  the  Latin 
translator,  but  by  the  author  himself  of  the 
Greek  original. 

Since  this  momentous  fact  has  been  de- 
cided in  this  unexpected  way,  it  has  been 
asked  a  second  time  whether  we  are  entitled 
to  draw  from  it  such  important  consequences. 
Might  not  the  formula,  "It  is  written,"  have 
been  applied  to  any  other  written  book? 
That  this  could  not  be  the  case,  our  previ- 
ous remarks  on  the  use  of  the  formula  suffi- 


APOSTOLIC   FATHEES.  101 

ciently  prove.  We  liave  no  right  whatever 
to  weaken  tlie  use  of  the  expression  in  this 
particular  case.  But  a  critic  of  the  negative 
school  has  tried  to  show  his  ingenuity  in  a 
peculiar  way.  In  an  apocryphal  book  called 
the  Fourth  Book  of  Ezra,  written  probably 
by  some  Jewish  Christian  after  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem,  we  read,  "  For  many  are 
born,  but  few  shall  be  saved."  This  expres- 
sion has  a  certain  resemblance  to  the  expres- 
sion of  St.  Matthew,  but  it  is  clearly  different. 
But  a  learned  man  has,  with  all  seriousness, 
attempted  to  show  that  the  words  of  the  Sav- 
iour introduced  by  the  expressive  ''  It  is  writ- 
ten," in  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  are  not  really 
taken  from  St.  Matthew,  but  from  this  Book 
of  Ezra,  and  that  the  writer  of  the  epistle  has 
substituted  the  one  phrase  for  the  other ;  and 
consequently  that  the  formula,  "It  is  writ- 
ten," applies  to  the  apocryphal  Book  of  Ezra, 
not  to  the  gospel  of  St.  Matthew.  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  Strauss,  who  has  attempted  to 
turn  the  Hfe  of  Jesus  into  a  mere  fancy  or 
cloud-picture,  that  he  has  marked  with  his 
approval  this  trick  of  conjuring  away  a  pas- 
sage in  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas.     For  our 


102  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

part,  we  see  in  it  notliing  more  than  an  out- 
come of  that  anti-Christian  spirit  which  has 
matured  itself  in  the  school  of  Renan.  It  is 
best  described  in  the  words  of  the  Apostle  to 
Timotl:^— 2  Tim.  4:4— "And  they  shall  turn 
away  their  ears  from  the  truth,  and  shall  be 
turned  into  fables."  I  think  the  reader  will 
uow  agree  with  me  when  I  say  that,  so  long 
as  nothing  stronger  than  this  can  be  adduced 
to  weaken  the  force  of  this  passage  in  the 
Epistle  of  Barnabas,  no  one  can  go  wrong 
who  simply  holds  by  the  truth.  The  above 
effort  of  misapplied  ingenuity  only  proves 
what  efforts  must  be  made  to  get  rid  of  the 
force  of  the  passage. 

We  have  to  consider  these  conclusions  yet 
more  attentively.  The  Epistle  of  Barnabas 
does  not  date  from  later  than  the  early  part 
of  the  second  century.  While  critics  have 
generally  been  divided  between  assigning  it 
to  the  first  or  second  decade  of  the  second 
century,  the  Sinaitic  Bible,  which  has  for  the 
first  time  cleared  up  this  question,  has  led  us 
to  throw  its  composition  as  far  back  as  the 
last  decade  of  the  first  century.  In  this  ven- 
erable document,  which  Clement  of  Alexau- 


\ 


APOSTOLIC    FATHEKS.  103 

drift,  at  the  end  of  the  second  century,  reck- 
oned as  part  of  holy  Scripture,  there  are  sev- 
eral passages  which  refer  to  St.  Matthew's 
gospel ;  as  in  chapter  9 :  13,  when  our  Lord 
says,  he  was  not  come  to  call  the  righteous, 
but  sinners,  to  repentance :  the  words,  "  to 
repentance,"  are  here  introduced  in  the  Epis- 
tle of  Barnabas,  as  well  as  in  St.  Matthew's 
gospel,  by  way  of  explanation,  from  Luke 
5 :  32.  It  is  very  probable,  also,  that  the  re- 
marks of  Barnabas  on  the  serpent  of  Moses 
as  a  type  of  the  Saviour  are  founded  on  the 
well  -  known  passage  in  e^hn  3  :  14.  It  is 
remarkable,  moreover,  that  Matthew  22  :  14 
is  introduced  with  the  usual  formula  which 
marks  a  quotation  from  holy  Scripture.  It 
is  clear,  therefore,  that  at  the  beginning  of 
the  second  century  the  gospel  of  St.  Matthew 
was  already  regarded  as  a  canonical  book. 

This  result  is  all  the  more  remarkable  when 
we  consider  that  St.  Matthew's  gospel  has 
been  considered  not  so  much  a  book  by  it- 
self as  one  of  four  gospels  that  together  en- 
tered into  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament. 
The  inquiries  which  we  have  made  into  the 
first  three  quarters  of  the  second  century 


104         THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

have  given  promiDence  at  one  time  to  the 
gospel  of  St.  Matthew,  at  another  time  to 
that  of  St.  Luke  and  St.  John ;  but  the  gos- 
pel of  St.  Mark  has  been  less  noticed,  as  it 
furnished  fewer  citations.     It  would  not  be 
fair  to  infer  from  this  that  the  gospel  which 
was  alone  cited,  alone  had  any  authority  in 
the  early  church.     Now  the  use  which  Justin 
makes  of  the  Acts  of  Pilate  proves  to  us  that, 
at  least  as  early  as  the  end  of  the  first  cen- 
tury, the  gospel  of  John  must  have  been  in 
use ;  and  Justin  himself,  in  the  first  half  of 
the  second  centuiy,  makes  frequent  reference 
to  St.  John,  and  even  more  frequent  to  St. 
Matthew's  gospel.     Is  not  this  of  itself  a  suf- 
ficient proof  that  if,  at  the  time  when  Barna- 
bas' epistle  was  written,  St.  Matthew's  gos- 
pel was  considered  canonical,  the  same  must 
be  the  case  with  St.  John  ?     Basilides,  in  the 
reign  of  Adrian,  117-138,  made  use  of  St. 
John  and  St.  Luke.     Yalentinus,  about  A.  D. 
140,  makes  use  of  St.  Matthew,  St.  Luke,  and 
St.  John.     Are  not  these  additional  proofs  in 
our  favor  ?     Already  as  early  as  the  time  of 
Justin,  the  expression,  "the  evangel,"  was  ap- 
plied to  the  four  gospels,  so  that  the  name  of 


APOSTOLIC    FATHEES.   .  105 

each  of  the  four  writers  dropped  into  the  back- 
ground ;  and  in  the  second  half  of  the  second 
century  we  find  the  number  of  the  evangehsts 
restricted  to  four,  and  the  matter  treated  as 
a  subject  which  was  beyond  dispute.  What 
follows  from  this  ?  It  follows  that  no  one  of 
these  gospels  could  have  been  elevated  by 
itself  to  a  place  of  authority  in  the  canon 
of  Scripture.  The  church  only  ventured  to 
place  them  in  the  canon  when  they  had  been 
already  received  as  the  four  gospels,  and  as 
such  had  been  long  prized  as  genuine  apos- 
tolical writings. 

"When  we  further  ask  ourselves  when  this 
took  place,  we  are  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  must  have  occurred  about  the  end  of 
the  first  century.  This  was  the  time  when, 
after  the  death  of  the  aged  John,  those  holy 
mpn  who  had  known  the  Lord  in  the  flesh, 
including  the  great  apostle  of  the-  Gentiles 
and  the  early  church,  had  thus  lost  a  definite 
centre  of  authority.  It  was  at  this  time,  when 
the  church  dispersed  over  the  world  was  per- 
secuted without  and  distracted  by  error  with- 
in, that  she  began  to  venerate  and  regard  as 
sacred  the  writings  which  the  apostles  had 


106         THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

left  beliiucl  them  as  precious  depositories  of 
truth,  as  unerring  records  of  the  life  of  the 
Saviour,  and  as  an  authoritative  rule  of  faith 
and  practice.  The  right  time  had  therefore 
come  for  enrolling  their  writings  among  the 
Canonical  Scriptures.  The  separation  be- 
tween the  church  and  the  synagogue  was  now 
complete.  Since  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  temple  service,  A.  D.  70,  the  church 
had  been  thrown  more  entirely  on  her  own 
resources,  and  stood  now  independent.  It 
was  a  marked  proof  of  her  independence 
when  she  ventured  to  rank  her  sacred  wri- 
tiuGfs  on  a  level  with  those  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment,  which  the  Christian  church  herself 
prized  so  highly. 

Do  you  ask  in  what  way  and  by  what  act 
this  was  done  ?  Certainly  no  learned  assem- 
blies sat  to  decide  this  question.  If  men  like 
Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  had  left 
behind  them  outlines  of  the  Lord's  life,  did 
it  need  any  thing  more  than  their  names  to 
make  their  writings  of  the  highest  value  to 
the  early  church?  And  had  not  these  men 
stood  in  such  near  relationship  to  the  church 
as  to  make  it  impossible  to  pass  off  forged 


APOSTOLIC    FATHEES.  107 

writings  of  tlieirs  without  detection?  There 
was  no  gospel  more  difficult  to  be  tampered 
with  than  St.  John's.  His  gospel  went  forth 
from  the  midst  of  the  circle  of  churches  of 
Asia  Minor,  and  spread  thence  into  all  the 
world.  Was  this  possible  if  the  slightest 
taint  of  suspicion  had  lain  upon  Jt?  Sup- 
pose, on  the  other  hand,  that  it  first  appeared 
elsewhere,  then  we  may  be  sure  that  these 
Asiatic  churches  would  have  been  the  first  to 
detect  the  fraud.  It  would  have  been  impos- 
sible to  palm  upon  them  a  spurious  document 
as  the  writing  of  their  former  bis.hop. 

We  have  an  old  tradition  on  the  subject, 
which  Eusebius  in  his  Church  History,  3,  24, 
has  referred  to.  It  says  that  the  three  gos- 
pels abeady  extensively  known  were  laid 
before  St.  John  by  his  friends.  He  bore 
witness  to  their  truth,  but  said  that  they  had 
passed  over  what  Jesus  had  done  at  the  be- 
ginning of  his  public  ministry.  His  friends 
then  expressed  a  desire  that  he  should  give  an 
account  of  this  period  which  had  been  passed 
over.  This  narrative  is  substantially  con- 
firmed by  the  contents  of  St.  John's  gospel,  a 
point  which  Eusebius  has  not  failed  to  notice. 


108         THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

We  cojiclucle,  tlien,  that  it  was  towards  the 
end  of  the  first  century,  and  about  the  time 
of  John's  decease  at  Ephesus,  that  the  church 
began  to  place  the  four  gospels  in  the  Canon. 
The  reasons  which  lead  us  to  assign  this  as 
the  right  date  for  the  commencement  of  the 
Canon  are  of  themselves  sufficient;  but  we 
would  not  so  confidently  maintain  this  opin- 
ion if  the  history  and  literature  of  the  entire 
second  century,  as  far  as  we  have  been  able 
to  look  into  the  subject,  did  not  support  our 
view  of  the  case. 

We  have  only  one  authority  more  to  pro- 
duce in  our  review  of  the  earliest  Christian 
literature.  It  is  the  testimony  of  Papias,  who 
more  than  any  other  has  been  misrepresented 
by  modern  opponents  of  the  gospel.  The 
uncertainty  which  rests  over  Papias  himself 
and  his  testimony  does  not  allow  us  to  class 
him  in  the  same  rank  with  the  other  testimo- 
nies we  have  already  adduced.  But  such  as 
it  is,  we  here  produce  it. 

We  learn  from  Euscbius,  3,  39,  that  Pa- 
pias wrote  a  work  in  five  books,  which  he 
called  a  "Collection  of  the  Sayings  of  the 
Lord."    In  collecting  materials  for  this  work, 


APOSTOLIC   FATHERS.  109 

he  preferred  to  lean  rather  on  uncertain  tra- 
ditions than  on  what  was  written  in  books. 
He  drew  accordingly  upon  certain  oral  tradi- 
tions which  could  be  traced  up  to  the  apos- 
tles.    His  own  words  on  these  traditions  are 
as  follows:  "I  intend  to  put  together  what 
has  been  reported  to  me  by  the  most  ancient 
presbyters,  in  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to 
verify  it  through  my  own  inquiries."      He 
adds  further,  "Whenever  I  met  any  one  who 
had  held  converse  with  these  aged  presby- 
ters, I  at  once  inquired  of  him  what,  accord- 
ing to  the  most?  trustworthy  traditions,  Peter 
or  Philip,  or  Thomas,  James,  or  John,  or 
Matthew,  or  any  other  of  the  Lord's  disci- 
ples, had  said."     It  is  not  clear  from  these 
w^ords  whom  he  means  by  the  most  ancient. 
Some   learned   men   have   erroneously  sup- 
posed that  he  referred  to  the  apostles  them- 
selves as  his  authorities.      It  is  much  more 
likely  that  he  refers  to  those  venerable  men 
who  had  spoken  with  the  apostles.     So  Euse- 
bius  thinks,  who  had  the  whole  work  of  Papias 
before  him,  and  he  distinctly  says  so.    He  re- 
cords of  Papias  that  he  nowhere  claims  to  have 
seen  or  heard  the  holy  apostles  but  to  have 


110    THE  DATE  OF  THE  GOSPELS. 

been  a  pupil  of  Aristion  and  of  John  the  Pres- 
byter, to  whose  testimony  he  generally  refers. 
It  struck  Eusebius,  therefore,  that  it  was  an 
error  in  Irenseus  to  call  Papias  a  "  disciple  of 
John  and  the  companion  of  Polycarp,"  a  mis- 
take which  he  fell  into  by  confounding  John 
the  Presbyter  Avith  the  Apostle  John.  This 
is  confirmed  by  the  wonderful  tradition  which 
Irenceus  relates  of  the  millennial  reign,  "  out  of 
the  mouth  of  those  elders  who  had  seen  John, 
the  Lord's  disciple."  In  this  place,  Irenaeus 
undoubtedly  distinguishes  between  these 
elders  and  the  apostles.  But  inasmuch  as  he 
appeals  to  Papias  as  his  authority  for  this 
tradition  of  a  reign  of  a  thousand  years,  ho 
leaves  no  doubt  that  the  elders  of  whom  he 
speaks  are  no  others  than  those  named  by 
Papias. 

Eusebius  gives  us  some  further  extracts 
from  this  work  of  Papias,  namely,  the  story 
related  to  him  by  the  daughters  of  Philip  the 
deacon,  of  the  raising  to  life  of  a  dead  man 
by  their  father,  and  that  Justus  Barnabas  had 
drunk  a  cup  of  2:)oison  without  receiving  any 
hurt.  Papias  went  on  farther  —  we  follow 
here  the  account  of  Eusebius — to  give  some 


APOSTOLIC    FATHERS.  Ill 

detailed  accounts  whicli  he  professed  to  have 
received  bj  tradition,  such  as  "certain  un- 
known or  apocryphal  parables  and  lessons 
of  our  Lord  and  others,  some  of  which  are 
fabulous."  Of  this  kind  is  the  doctrine  of  a 
millennial  kingdom,  w^hich  is  to  take  place  in 
a  certain  carnal  sense  on  this  earth  after  the 
general  resurrection.  Eusebius  has  not  given 
us  a  delineation  of  this  kingdom,  but  Irenaeus 
has.  It  is  as  follows:  "The  days  shall  come 
in  which  vines  shall  grow,  of  which  each 
vine  shall  bear  ten  thousand  branches,  each 
branch  ten  thousand  clusters,  each  cluster 
ten  thousand  grapes,  and  each  grape  contain 
ten  measures  of  wine ;  and  when  any  one  of 
the  saints  shall  go  to  pluck  a  grape,  another 
grape  shall  cry  out,  '  I  am  better ;  take  me, 
and  praise  the  Lord.'  So  each  corn  of  wheat 
shall  produce  ten  thousand  ears,  and  each 
ear  ten  thousand  grains,"  etc. 

This  narrative  Papias  professec^  to  have 
received  from  certain  elders,  who  in  their 
turn  received  it  from  St.  John.  Eusebius 
remarks  on  this,  that  Papias,  w^ho  was  a  man 
of  very  narrow  understanding,  as  his  book 
fully  proves,  must  have  got  these  oj)inions 


112  THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

from  misunderstanding  some  of  the  apostles' 
writings.  ^  He  goes  on  to  say  that  there  are 
other  accounts  of  the  Lord's  sayings  taken 
from  Aristion  and  Presbj'ter  John  to  be 
found  in  Papias'  book,  for  which  he  refers 
the  curious  to  the  book  itself.  Here,  Euse- 
bius  says,  he  will  close  his  remarks  on  Papias 
with  one  tradition  about  St.  Mark.  It  is 
to  this  effect :  "  And  so  the  Presbyter  said — 
Mark,  the  interpreter  of  St.  Peter,  had  writ- 
ten down  whatever  saying  of  Peter's  he  could 
remember,  but  not  the  sajdngs  and  deeds  of 
Christ  in  order ;  for  he  was  neither  a  disciple 
of  the  Lord,  nor  had  he  heard  him,  but,  as  we 
have  seen  above,  learned  these  things  from 
Peter,  who  was  in  the  habit  of  referring  to 
the  events  of  the  Lord's  life  as  occasion  might 
suggest,  but  never  in  any  systematic  wa}-. 
Mark,  in  consequence,  never  failed  to  write 
down  these  remembrances  as  they  fell  from 
Peter's  lips,  and  was  never  known  to  have 
failed  in  thus  preserving  an  exact  record  of 
what  Peter  said." 

To  these  extracts  from  Papias,  Eusebius 
added  another  upon  St.  Matthew,  as  follows : 
"  Thus  far  on  St.  Mark— as  to  St.  Mrftthew, 


APOSTOLIC   FATHERS.  113 

Papias  teils  us  that  lie  wrote  kis  Words  of  tlie 
Lord  in  Hebrew,  and  whoever  could  do  so 
afterwards   translated  it."      In  this  extract 
there  is  something  obscure;  it  is  doubtful 
whether  we  have  rightly  rendered  "the  words 
of  the  Lord,"  since  what  Papias  has  before 
observed  upon  Mark — we  refer  to  the  words, 
"What  Christ  has  spoken  or  done" — makes 
it  probable  that  we  are  to  include  under  the 
expression  both  words  and  deeds.     Now,  all 
these  traditions  of  the  Presbyter  John  and  of 
Papias  rest  upon  the  gospels  of  St.  Matthew 
and  St.  Mark.     Even  if  the  expression,  "  the 
words   of  the   Lord,"  is   to   be  understood 
strictly,  we  are  not  to  conclude  that  there 
was  then  no  written  record  of  these  sayings 
already  in  existence,  since  neither  Eusebius 
nor  any  other  early  writer  ever  supj)osed  that 
these  extracts  of  Papias  stood  in  contradic- 
tion with  the  two  gosj)els  of  Matthew  and 
Mark.     When,  therefore,  modern  writers  un- 
dertake to  show  that  our  gospel  of  Mark  is 
not  the  original  gospel  written  by  St.  Mark 
himself,  but   only  a   compilation   from  that 
original,  this  very  theory  convicts  itself  of 
being  an  arbitrary  assumption.     The  theory 

Gt'Spels  Wi  itton.  ^  S 


IIJ:  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

is  only  too  well  adapted  to  invite  a  spirit  of 
loose  conjecture  as  to  tlie  origin  of  our  gos- 
pels. 

This  is  true  of  St.  Matthew's  gospel  as  well 
as  of  St.  Mark's.  The  point  of  the  extract 
fi'om  Papias  about  St.  Matthew  lies  in  this, 
that  he  says  that  the  evangelist  wrote  it  in 
Hebrew.  If  this  assertion  of  Papias  is  well 
founded,  the  next  sajdng  of  his,  that  "  any 
one  translated  it  who  was  able  to  do  so," 
opens  a  wide  field  for  supposing  all  manner 
of  differences  between  the  Hebrew  original 
and  the  Greek  text.  This  Hebrew  text  must 
have  been  lost  very  early,  as  not  one  even  of 
the  very  oldest  church  fathers  had  ever  seen 
or  used  it.  My  reader  will  see  that  I  am 
casting  a  hasty  glance  at  a  very  tangled  and 
intricate  question.  For  our  part,  we  are 
fully  satisfied  that  Papias'  assertion  of  an 
original  Hebrew  text  rests  on  a  misunder- 
standing of  his,  To  make  this  clear  would 
take  up  too  much  space  ;  we  can,  therefore, 
only  give  here  the  following  brief  explanation 
of  Papias'  error. 

From  the  Epistle  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  we  gather  that  thus  early  there  was  a 


•  APOSTOLIC    FATHERS.  115 

Judaizing  party.  This  party  spirit  broke  out 
even  more  fiercely  after  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem.  There  were  two  parties  among 
these  Judaizers;  the  one  the  Nazarenes,  and 
the  other  the  Ebionites.  Each  of  these  par- 
ties used  a  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew ; 
the  one  party  using  a  Greek  text,  and  the 
other  party  a  Hebrew.  That  they  did  not 
scruple  to  tamper  with  the  text,  to  suit  their 
creed,  is  probable  from  that  very  sectarian 
spirit.  The  text,  as  we  have  certain  means 
of  proving,  rested  upon  our  received  text  of 
St.  Matthew,  with,  however,  occasional  depar- 
tures, to  suit  their  arbitrary  views.  When, 
then,  it  was  reported,  in  later  times,  that 
these  Nazarenes,  who  were  one  of  the  earliest 
Christian  sects,  possessed  a  Hebrew  version 
of  Matthew,  what  was  more  natural  than  that 
some  person  or  other  thus  falling  in  with  the 
pretensions  of  this  sect  should  say  that  Mat- 
thew originally  was  written  in  Hebrew,  and 
that  the  Greek  was  only  a  version  from  it  ? 
How  far  these  two  sects  differed  from  each 
other  no  one  cared  to  inquire ;  and  with 
such  separatists  as  the  Nazarenes,  who  with- 
drew themselves  to  the  shores  of  the  Dead 


116         THE   DATE    OF   THE    GOSPELS. 

sea,  it  would  not  have  been  easy  to  attempt 
it. 

Jerome  supports  us  in  this  clearing  up  of 
Papias'  meaning.  Jerome,  who  knew  He- 
brew, as  other  Latin  and  Greek  fathers  did 
not,  obtained  in  the  fourth  century  a  copy  of 
this  Hebrew  gospel  of  the  Nazarenes,  and  at 
once  asserted  that  he  had  found  the  Hebrew 
original.  But  when  he  looked  more  closely 
into  the  matter,  he  confined  himself  to  the 
statement  that  many  supposed  that  this  He- 
brew text  was  the  original  of  St.  Matthew's 
gospel.  He  translated  it  into  Latin  and 
Greek,  and  added  a  few  observations  of  his 
own  on  it. 

From  these  observations  of  Jerome,  as 
well  as  from  other  fragments,  we  must  con- 
clude that  this  notion  of  Papias — in  which 
several  learned  men  of  our  day  agree— that 
the  Hebrew  was  the  original  text  of  St.  Mat- 
thew, cannot  be  substantiated;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  this  Hebrew  has  been  drawn  from 
the  Greek  text,  and  disfigured  moreover  here 
and  there  with  certain  arbitrary  changes. 
The  same  is  applicable  to  a  Greek  text  of  the 
Hebrew  gospel  in  use  among  the  Ebionites. 


APOSTOLIC    FATHERS.  117 

This  text,  from  the  fact  that  it  was  in  Greek, 
was  better  known  to  the  church  than  the  He- 
brew version  of  the  Nazarenes;  but  it  was 
always  regarded,  from  the  earliest  times,  as 
only  another  text  of  St.  Matthew's  gospel. 
This  explains  also  what  Papias  had  said  about 
several  translations  of  St.  Matthew. 

We  have  something  more  to  say  about  Pa- 
pias and  his  strange  compilation.  On  the  sub- 
ject of  his  materials,  he  says  that  he  sought 
for  little  help  from  written  records.  Of  what 
records  does  he  here  speak?  Is  it  of  our 
gospels?  This  is  not  impossible  from  the 
expi-ession  itself,  but  from  the  whole  charac- 
ter of  his  book  it  seems  very  improbable,  since 
it  seems  to  have  been  his  object  to  supple- 
ment these  with  the  traditions  about  the  Sa- 
viour which  were  current  about  A.  d.  130  or 
140.  We  cannot  suppose  that  the  gospels 
themselves  were  the  storehouses  from  which 
he  compiled  these  traditions.  He  must  have 
sought  for  them  among  those  apocryphal 
writings  which  began  to  circulate  from  the 
very  first.  To  those  traditions  of  the  apoc- 
ryphal gospels  he  opposed  his  own  collection 
of  traditions,  whose  genuineness  he  pretended 


113  THE    DATE   OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

could,  like  the  gospels  tliemselves,  be  traced 
U23  to  the  Apostles. 

We  have  seen  already,  from  Eiisebius'  no- 
tice of  Papias'  work,  what  kind  of  traditions 
they  were  which  he  collected — traditions  such 
as  those  about  Philip  the  Deacon  having 
raised  the  dead,  or  Justus  Barnabas  having 
drunk  poison  without  receiving  any  hurt.  A 
third  tradition  of  the  same  kind,  which  he 
says  is  contained  in  the  gospel  of  the  He- 
brews, is  that  of  the  history  of  a  woman  who 
was  a  sinner  accused  before  Jesus.  In  this 
same  book  also,  as  we  learn  from  (Ecumenius, 
there  is  a  story  to  the  effect  that  the  body 
of  Judas  the  betrayer  was  so  swollen,  that 
being  thrown  down  by  a  chariot  in  a  narrow 
street,  all  his  bowels  gushed  out.  The  book 
also  contained,  as  we  have  already  seen  on  the 
authority  of  Eusebius,  certain  unknown  para- 
bles and  doctrines  of  our  Lord ;  but  he  does 
not  think  it  worth  his  while  to  notice  one  of 
them ;  nor  did  any  other  church  writer  do  so, 
with  the  exception  of  Irena3us  (whose  account 
of  Papias'  millenarian  fancies  we  have  already 
referred  to),  and  Andrew  of  Csesarea,  in  the 
sixth  century,  who  notices  in  his  Commentary 


APOSTOLIC   FATHEES.  119 

on  the  Book  of  Revelation,  a  remark  of  Pa- 
pias  about  the  fallen  angels.  Eusebius,  for 
his  part,  dismisses  these  accounts  of  Papias, 
about  parables  of  our  Lord,  which  he  received 
by  tradition,  as  "altogether  fabulous." 

Now,  with  all  that  we  thus  know  about  the 
truth  of  Papias  and  his  book,  what  credit  are 
we  to  attach  to  him  as  a  testimony  for  our 
Gospels?  Though  there  are  men  of  ability 
here  and  there  who  have  credited  Papias,  we 
cannot  help  taking  the  contrary  side.  Euse- 
bius'  opinion  about  Papias,  that  he  w^as  a 
man  of  very  contracted  mind,  is  proved,  not 
only  by  the  extracts  from  him  we  have  already 
noticed,  but  also  by  the  way  in  which  his  at- 
tempt to  enrich  the  gospel  narrative  has  been 
allowed  to  drop  into  oblivion  by  the  entire 
Christian  church.  How  we  should  have  prized 
even  a  single  parable  of  our  Lord,  if  it  had 
borne  any  internal  marks  of  being  genuine ! 
But  no  one  paid  the  slightest  attention  to 
this  collection  of  Papias  :  the  air  of  fable, 
which  even  Eusebius — who  is  himself  by  no 
means  remarkable  for  critical  acumen — ex- 
poses, throws  a  cloud  of  suspicion  over  the 
whole  book. 


120    THE  DATE  OF  THE  GOSPELS. 

Yet,  notwitlistanding  all  this,  tliere  are  men 
in  the  present  century,  professing  to  be  mod- 
els of  critical  severity,  who  set  up  Papias  as 
their  torch-bearer  in  these  inquiries.  They 
have  attempted  to  use  his  obscure  and  con- 
tradictory remarks  about  St.  Matthew  and 
St.  Mark,  to  separate  between  the  original 
element  and  the  spurious  additions  to  these 
gospels.  This  is  indeed  to  set  up  Papias  on 
a  pedestal!  But  Papias  is  even  more  readily 
seized  on  by  those  who  wish  to  overturn  the 
credit  of  St.  John's  gospel.  And  why  so? 
Papias  is  silent  as  to  this  gospel.  This 
silence  of  Papias  is  advanced  by  Strauss, 
E-enan,  and  such  like  opponents  of  the  faith 
of  the  church,  as  a  most  damaging  fact 
against  the  genuineness  of  the  gospel.  I 
rather  think  our  readers  who  have  meas- 
ured Papias  aright  Avill  not  readily  agi^ee 
to  this.  Did  not  the  motive  betray  itself,  I 
should  ask  the  reader  whether  producing 
Papias  as  a  witness  on  such  a  question  does 
not  imply  a  misunderstanding  of  him  and  his 
book.  His  notices  about  St.  Matthew  and 
St.  Mark  do  not  change  the  character  of  his 
book.     But  they  say  that  Papias  could  not 


APOSTOLIC   FATHEES.  121 

have  known  of  John's  gospel,  or  he  would 
have  mentioned  it ;  and  that  we  have  thus  a 
proof  that  the  gospel  could  not  have  been  in 
existence,  since  Papias  was  bishop  of  Hierap- 
oUs,  a  town  in  the  neighborhood  of  Ephesus, 
whence  the  gospel  of  St.  John  was  sent  forth ; 
and  the  earliest  record  we  have  about  the 
martyrdom  of  Papias  sets  it  down  about  the 
same  time  as  that  of  Polycarp,  i.  e.  about 
A.  D.  160. 

Now,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  a  statement 
more  utterly  groundless  and  arbitrary  than 
this,  that  the  silence  of  Papias  as  to  the  gos- 
pel of  St.  John  is  a  good  proof  against  its 
genuineness.  For,  in  the  first  place,  any  no- 
tice of  John's  gospel  lay  altogether  out  of  the 
direction  of  Papias'  researches  ;  and,  second- 
ly, we  have  no  right  to  conclude,  from  Euse- 
bius'  extracts  out  of  Papias'  book,  that  there 
was  no  reference  to  St.  John's  gospel  in  the 
entire  book.  The  notices  of  St.  Matthew  and 
St.  Mark  which  Eusebius  quotes  from  Papias 
are  not  introduced  to  prove  their  authenti- 
city, but  only  for  the  particular  details  which 
he  mentions.  It  is  quite  possible  that  this 
writing  did  not  contain  the  same  kind  of  ref- 


122  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

erence  to  St.  John's  writings,  and  this  is  all 
that  the  silence  of  Eusebius  proves.  Let  us 
only  add,  that  Eusebius,  in  his  extracts  from 
Papias,  makes  no  reference  to  St.  Luke's 
gospel.  Are  we,  therefore,  to  conclude  that 
Papias  knew  nothing  of  this  gospel  also? 
And  yet  we  are  logically  bound  to  draw  this 
conclusion,  absurd  as  it   is,  in  both  cases. 

We  have  only  one  point  more  to  touch 
upon  here.  At  the  end  of  his  notice  of  Pa- 
pias, Eusebius  remarks,  that  this  writer  has 
made  use  of  passages  taken  from  the  first 
Epistle  of  John  and  the  first  Epistle  of  Pe- 
ter. Does  not  this  fact  bear  against  us  who 
refuse  to  see  any  force  in  his  silence  as  to  St. 
Luke,  St.  Paul,  and  the  gospel  of  St.  John  ? 
Quite  the  contrary.  No  one  in  the  early 
church  era  doubted  these  writings,  and  so 
it  never  occurred  to  Eusebius  to  collect  tes- 
timonies in  their  favor.  But  it  was  other- 
wise with  the  Catholic  Epistles,  the  Apoca- 
lypse, and  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews ;  and 
it  was  of  importance  to  adduce  testimonies 
in  their  favor.  But  it  may  be  said  this  pro- 
ceeding is  arbitrary.  No,  we  answer ;  and 
in  favor  of  the  justice  of  our  point  of  view, 


APOSTOLIC   FATHERS.  123 

we  have  two  arguments  to  adduce.  Eusebius 
only  says  one  thing  of  Polycarp's  letter  to 
the  Philippians  —  that  it  contains  passages 
taken  from  the  first  Epistle  of  Peter ;  and  yet 
the  letter  is  full  of  quotations  from  St.  Paul ! 
He  also  mentions  (iv.  26)  that  Theophilus,  in 
his  letter  to  his  friend  Autolycus,  made  use 
of  the  Apocalypse;  and  yet  he  does  not  so 
much  as  notice  that  these  books  contain  a 
citation  of  a  passage  from  the  gospel  of  St. 
John,  and  even  with  the  name  of  the  apos- 
tle given.  Now,  the  blind  zeal  of  the  ad- 
versaries of  the  gospel  has  either  chosen 
not  to  see  this,  or  has  passed  it  over  in 
silence. 

But  there  is  another  argument  which  we 
can  appeal  to.  Eusebius  has  told  us  that 
Papias  made  use  of  St.  John's  first  Epistle. 
Now,  there  are  strong  reasons,  as  we  have 
seen  above,  for  concluding  that  the  gospel 
and  the  epistle  came  from  the  same  hand. 
The  testimony,  therefore,  of  Papias  in  favor 
of  the  epistle  really  amounts  to  one  in  favor 
of  the  gospel.  It  is  quite  possible  that  those 
critics  who  treat  history  so  freely,  after  hav- 
ing set  aside  the  greater  number  of  St.  Paul's 


124  THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

epistles,  can  also  treat  in  the  same  way  tlie 
gospel  of  St.  Jolin,  tliougii  unquestioned  hith- 
erto. They  have  done  so ;  but  in  face  of  such 
prejudice,  and  a  determination  to  see  only 
from  their  own  point  of  view,  we  have  noth- 
ing more  to  say. 


EARLY  MANUSCRIPTS  AND  VERSIONS.  125 


CHAPTEK  Y. 

MANUSCEIPTS   AND    VEESIONS    OF    THE 
SECOND  CENTUEY. 

Such,  then,  are  the  weapons  which  we  em- 
ploy against  an  unbelieving  criticism.  But 
to  complete  our  aim,  and  maintain  the  truth 
of  the  gospel,  we  must  procure  a  new  weapon, 
or  rather,  open  a  new  arsenal  of  defence.  It 
bears  the  name  of  New  Testament  Textual 
Criticism.  It  is  not  easy  to  make  this  at 
once  clear  to  aU  readers;  we  must  endeavor 
to  do  so. 

The  name  denotes  that  branch  of  learning 
which  is  concerned  with  the  originals  of  the 
sacred  text.  The  inquiry  into  these  originals 
should  teach  us  what  the  Christian  church  in 
various  times  and  in  different  lands  has  found 
written  in  those  books  which  contain  the 
New  Testament.  Thus,  for  instance,  it  should 
teach  us  what  was  the  text  used  by  Columba 
in  the  sixth  century,  by  Ambrose  and  Augus- 
tin  in  the  fourth,  and  by  Cyprian  and  Ter- 
tulhan,  in  their  Latin  copies,  in  the  third  and 


126         THE    DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS. 

second  century ;  and  what  the  patriarch  Pho- 
tius  in  the  tenth,  Cyril,  bishop  of  Jerusalem, 
in  the  fifth,  Athanasius  in  the  fourth,  and 
Origen  in  the  third,  had  before  them  in  the 
Greek  text.  The  chief  end  of  such  inquiries, 
however,  lies  in  its  enabling  us  to  find  out 
the  very  words  and  expressions  which  the 
holy  apostles  either  wrote  or  dictated  to  their 
amanuenses.  If  the  New  Testament  is  the 
most  sacred  and  precious  book  in  the  world, 
we  should  surely  desire  to  possess  the  origi- 
nal text  of  each  of  its  books  in  the  state  in 
which  it  left  its  author's  hands,  without  either 
addition  or  blank,  or  change  of  any  kind.  I 
have  already  spoken  of  this  in  the  account 
of  my  travel  and  researches,  to  which  I  here 
refer  the  reader. 

If  you  ask  me,  then,  whether  any  popular 
version,  such  as  Luther's,  does  or  does  not 
contain  the  original  text,  my  answer  is  Yes 
and  No.  I  say  Yes,  as  far  as  concerns  your 
soul's  salvation :  all  that  is  needful  for  that, 
you  have  in  Luther's  version.  But  I  also 
say  No,  for  this  reason,  that  Luther  made 
his  translation  from  a  text  Avhich  needed 
correction  in  many  places.     For  this  Greek 


EARLY  MANUSCRirTS  AND  VERSIONS.   127 

text  wHcli  Lntlier  used  was  no  better  than 
the  received  text  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
based  on  the  few  manuscripts  then  acces- 
sible. "We  have  already  told  you  that  this 
text  differs  in  many  places  from  the  oldest 
authorities  of  the  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  cen- 
turies, and  therefore  must  be  replaced  by  a 
text  which  is  really  drawn  from  the  oldest 
sources  discoverable.  The  difficulty  of  find- 
ing such  a  text  lies  in  this,  that  there  is  a 
great  diversity  among  these  texts ;  we  have, 
therefore,  to  compare  them  closely  together, 
and  decide  on  certain  points  of  superiority 
on  which  to  prefer  one  text  to  another. 

We  have  in  this  then  a  fixed  point  of  the 
greatest  importance  on  which  we  can  safely 
take  our  stand :  that  the  Latin  text,  called  the 
old  Italic  version,  as  found  in  a  certain  class 
of  manuscripts,  was  already  in  use  as  early 
as  the  second  century.  The  text  of  the  old 
Italic  is  substantially  that  which  Tertullian, 
about  the  end  of  the  second  century,  and  the 
Latin  translator  of  Irenseus  still  earlier,  made 
use  of.  If  we  had  any  Greek  text  of  the  sec- 
ond c|;|itury  to  compare  with  this  old  Italic 
version,  we  should  then  be  able  to  arrive  at 


128         THE   DATE    OF    THE    GOSPELS 

the  original  Greek  text  at  that  time  in  use. 
"We  should  thus  be  able  to  approach  very 
nearly  to  the  original  text  which  came  from 
the  apostles'  hands,  since  it  is  certain  that 
the  text  of  the  second  century  must  resemble 
more  closely  that  of  the  first  than  any  later 
text  can  be  expected  to  do.  Such  a  manu- 
script is  before  us  in  the  Sinaitic  copy,  which 
more  than  any  other  is  in  closest  agreement 
with  the  old  Italic  version.  We  do  not  mean 
that  there  are  no  other  versions  which  agree 
as  closely  with  the  Sinaitic  copy  as  the  old 
Italic  version,  which  the  translator,  who  lived 
in  North  Africa,  somewhere  near  our  modern 
city  of  Algiers,  had  before  him.  For  we  find 
that  the  old  Syriac  version  which  has  been 
recently  found  is  quite  as  closely  related  as 
the  Italic.  The  fathers  of  the  Egyptian 
church  of  the  second  and  third  century,  more- 
over, estabhsh  the  trustworthiness  of  this 
Sinaitic  text. 

What,  then,  do  these  considerations  lead 
us  to  ?  In  the  first  place,  they  establish  this — 
that  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the  second  cen- 
tury our  four  gospels  existed  in  a  Syrj^c  and 
in  a  Latin  version.      This  fact  proves,  not 


EARLY  MANUSCRIPTS  AND  VERSIONS.  129 

only  what  the  harmonists  of  the  latter  half 
of  the  second  century  also  prove,  that  our 
gospels  had  already  been  received  into  the 
C-anon,  but  they  also  decide  that  point  which 
has  been  raised  as  to  the  genuineness  of  our 
present  copies  of  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Mark's 
gospels.  We  have  seen  how  certain  critics, 
on  the  authority  of  certain  loose  expressions 
of  Papias,  have  said  that  our  present  gospels 
are  only  versions  of  the  original  documents. 
To  this  supposition  these  two  versions  enter 
an  emphatic  protest.  At  least,  at  the  time 
when  these  versions  were  produced,  our  pres- 
ent gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark  must  have 
been  considered  genuine.  This  being  settled, 
it  is  a  groundless  and  unreasonable  supposi- 
tion that,  about  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century,  there  were  two  entirely  different 
copies  of  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Mark  in  exist- 
ence ;  for  then  we  should  have  to  admit  that 
these  authentic  copies  disappeared,  leaving 
not  a  trace  behind,  while  other  spurious 
copies  took  their  place,  and  were  received 
everywhere  instead  of  the  genuine  originals. 
We  have  only  one  more  inference  to  draw 
from  the  state  of  the  text  of  these  early  docu- 

Gospels  Written.  9 


ISO  THE   DATE   OF   THE    GOSPELS. 

ments,  the  old  Greek,  Sjriac,  and  Latin  cop- 
ies.    Although  these  set  forth  the  text  which 
was  in  general  use  about  the  middle  of  the 
second  century,  we  may  well  suppose  that 
before  this  text  came  into  use  it  had  a  history 
of  its  own.    I  mean  that  the  text  passed  from 
one  hand  to  another,  and  was  copied  again 
and  again,  and  so  must  have  suffered  from  all 
these  revisions.     I  can  only  here  assert  this 
as  the  result  of  my  long  experience  in  dealing 
with  manuscripts,  v/ithout  going  into  details 
to  prove  that  it  was  so.      But  I  must  here 
make  the  assertion  as  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant results  of  my  critical  labors.     If  no  one 
before  me  has  been  able  to  establish  this 
point  in  the  same  way,  this  is  owing  to  my 
fortunate    discovery    of    the    Sinaitic    co]Dy. 
Now  if  my  assertion  on  this  point  has  any 
solid  base  to  rest  upon,  as  I  hope  to  make 
good   on   another   occasion,  we   may  couli- 
dontly  say,  that  by  the  end  of  the  first  cen- 
tury our  four   gospels  were   in   use  in  the 
church.     I  here  advance  nothing  new.     For 
confirmation  of  what  I  say,  I  refer  my  reader 
to  what  I  have  already  advanced,  and  endeav- 
ored to  make  clear  and  apparent  to  all. 


EARLY  MANUSCKIPTS  AND  VERSIONS.  131 

And  now  I  draw  my  argument  to  a  close. 
Should  it  fall  into  the  hands  of  learned  oppo- 
nents, they  will  doubtless  say  that  I  have  left 
out  much  that  is  important.  This  seems  to 
me  to  be  mere  trifling.  It  is  easy  for  writers 
with  a  little  subtlety  to  expose  the  contra- 
dictions and  mistakes  of  certain  early  church 
fathers ;  and  it  is  to  meet  these  special  plead- 
ings that  historical  testimony  becomes  so  im- 
portant' A  single  well-established  fact  weighs 
more  in  the  scale  of  good  sense  than  the  most 
dazzling  wit,  the  most  ingenious  sophistry, 
with  which  they  torture  and  twist  the  facts 
which  occurred  eighteen  hundred  years  ago. 

May  my  writing  serve  this  end,  to  make 
you  mistrust  those  novel  theories  upon,  or 
rather  against,  the  gospels,  which  would  per- 
suade you  that  the  glorious  details  which  the 
gospels  give  us  of  our  gracious  Saviour  are 
founded  on  ignorance  or  deceit.  The  gos- 
pels, like  the  Only-Begotten  of  the  Father, 
will  endure  as  long  as  human  nature  itself, 
while  the  discoveries  of  this  pretended  wis- 
dom must  sooner  or  later  disappear  as  soap- 
bubbles.  He  who  has  made  shipwreck  of 
his  own  faith  and  fallen  away  to  the  flesh, 


132    THE  DATE  OF  THE  GOSPELS. 

cannot  endure  to  see  others  trusting  in  tlieii 
Saviour.  Do  not,  then,  let  yourself  be  dis- 
turbed by  their  clamor,  but  rather  hold  firmly 
what  you  have,  the  more  others  assail  it.  Do 
not  think  that  we  are  dubious  about  the  final 
victory  of  truth.  For  this  result  there  is  One 
pledged  to  whom  the  whole  world  is  mere 
feebleness.  All  that  concerns  our  duty  is,  to 
bear  testimony  to  the  truth,  to  the  best  of 
our  ability,  and  that  not  for  victory,  but  for 
conscience'  sake. 


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Date  Due 


•',       N'        "         P 


•^r 


BS2555.4.T617 

When  were  our  Gospels  written?  an 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00059  1661 


